Staff Software Engineer, Airbnb

The Community You Will Join:

Join our innovative team as a Distributed Systems Engineer, where you'll play a pivotal role in designing and building scalable, reliable systems that power our global platform. We value creativity and collaboration, and you'll have the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies in cloud computing, data management, and distributed architectures. If you're passionate about solving complex problems, optimizing performance, and leading technical initiatives, we want to hear from you! Help us shape the future of travel by ensuring our systems are robust, efficient, and ready to meet the demands of users worldwide.

A Typical Day: 

As a Staff Software Engineer you will:

• Provide thought leadership, define strategy, influence cross functional collaboration and drive architectural decisions.
• Lead multi-team technical initiatives, and work cross-functionally to identify opportunities for business impact, refine, and prioritize requirements for engineering systems.
• Architect and implement complex features, focusing on data-driven decision making and performance optimizations.
• Lead efforts with other engineering teams to advance Airbnb’s engineering processes and technical foundations
• Drive systemic improvements by identifying patterns to streamline development, reduce toil and increase technical quality and operational excellence over time.
• Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior engineers  through design reviews, code walkthroughs, and knowledge-sharing sessions, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous learning.

Your Expertise:

• 9+ years of experience in a hands-on software engineering role.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience
• Considerable experience working in Java, GO, Python or Scala 
• Strong understanding of distributed system concepts, including consistency models, CAP theorem, and distributed algorithms.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and services related to distributed computing (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker).
• Knowledge of databases (SQL and NoSQL) and data storage solutions in a distributed context.
• Understanding of network protocols, data serialization (e.g., JSON, Protobuf), and API design for distributed systems.
• Ability to analyze and optimize system performance and scalability.
• Technical leadership: hands on experience leading project teams, setting technical direction and strategy and mentoring engineers.
• Experience in technical leadership, mentoring engineers, and setting project direction.

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list . If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from..

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process. 

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.