ML & backend for an ambitious Al-Powered Hotel Search Engine (Astra)

Astra: Name code for a new ambitious project of building an alternative to Booking.com powered by Al. Led by a team of seasoned founders (Tiller acquired by SumUp, Zenly acquired by Snapchat) Mission: Build and evolve the backend that powers Astra—an Al-driven search engine for hotels. You'll work on transforming natural-language queries into structured searches, managing hotel data, orchestrating Al calls, and integrating external sources. Key Responsibilities Design and maintain search logic: Handle full flow from user query → Al parsing → DB filtering → ranked hotel results. Session & context management: Persist user search sessions, filters, and chat context across multiple screens (Home, Search, Hotel). Integrate LLM reasoning: Orchestrate OpenAl API calls (or equivalent) for query understanding, re-ranking, and contextual responses. Database management: Maintain and optimize Supabase (PostgreSQL) schemas for hotels, amenities, reviews, and user sessions. External data enrichment: Connect and normalize external APIs (eg. Booking.com, Google Places, Tavily/Serper) for complementary data. Performance optimization: Ensure low-latency search queries and scalable architecture (caching, pagination, indexing). Required Skills Core stack: Python (FastAPI), Supabase and PostgreSQL. API design: Strong experience with REST APIs (GraphQL is a plus). Al integration: Experience consuming LLM APIs (OpenAl, Anthropic, etc.), using RAG techniques and handling structured outputs (JSON schema). Data modeling: Ability to design flexible hotel/search schemas and manage complex filters. Session management: Familiar with persistent user context and conversational states. Query interpretation: Ability to map natural-language queries into structured search parameters. DevOps basics: Familiar with modern CI/CD, Docker, and deployment on Vercel, Railway, or Supabase Edge Functions. Nice to Have Knowledge of semantic search / embeddings / vector DBs (Weaviate, Pinecone, etc.). Familiarity with Al orchestration tools (LangChain, LlamaIndex, n8n). Understanding of prompt engineering and LLM function calling. Basic frontend awareness (React/Next.js) to collaborate closely with Ul developers. Experience in travel or marketplace data models (availability, amenities, geolocation). Profile 10+ years backend experience, incl in startups and/or projects from scratch Product-minded engineer who can balance speed and structure. Curious about Al and conversational interfaces. Comfortable iterating fast in a small, design-driven and fast-pace startup environment.