AI-First Platform Engineer (Distributed Systems)

Airbnb; United States; On-site; USD 162,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus eligibility

Equity

Employee Travel Credits

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking an engineer for the Application Platform team to design and maintain high-scale distributed services used by engineers and AI agents. You will own core features, implement robust production-grade systems, and expand observability while collaborating across product and infra teams.

You will work hands-on on critical-path services, drive feature rollouts, and contribute to on-call guidelines. A strong emphasis on AI-first approaches and technical communication is expected.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of industry experience.
• Experience working on distributed systems and evaluating trade-offs.
• Proficiency in Java, micro-services, observability systems, debugging distributed and multi-threaded systems.
• Embrace and engage in an AI-first engineering approach, using LLM-powered agents to generate and iterate on code while you focus on problem-solving, system design, and quality oversight.
• Proficiency in technical communication - writing design docs, presenting in design reviews, writing effective post-mortems, etc.
• Proactive, clear communication and collaboration within and across teams through code reviews and architecture discussions.
• Motivated to contribute to a positive team culture and building belonging together.
• Excited to join an impactful infrastructure team.

Responsibilities

• Designing and implementing distributed systems.
• Maintaining and debugging existing systems.
• Providing technical support to other engineers and developers.
• Staying current with emerging trends and technologies, especially in AI.
• Collaborating across Airbnb tech community and with external partners.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java

Micro-services

Observability

Debugging multi-threaded systems

AI-first engineering

Technical communication

Cross-team collaboration

Education

CS degree (Bachelor’s/Master’s)

CS degree or equivalent experience

Job description

Airbnb is seeking an engineer for the Application Platform team to design and maintain high-scale distributed services used by engineers and AI agents. You will own core features, implement robust production-grade systems, and expand observability while collaborating across product and infra teams.

You will work hands-on on critical-path services, drive feature rollouts, and contribute to on-call guidelines. A strong emphasis on AI-first approaches and technical communication is expected.