Data Engineering Lead — Scalable Pipelines & Governance

Airbnb; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a hands-on data engineering leader to guide the design, implementation, and operation of large-scale distributed data systems. You will drive data strategy, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and mentor engineers to ensure data quality and reliability across products and platforms.

The role emphasizes scalable architectures, governance, and driving long-term data engineering practices across the BizTech data ecosystem at Airbnb.

Qualifications

• 9+ years of data engineering or equivalent leadership experience.
• Experience designing and operating distributed data platforms at scale.
• Strong focus on data quality, governance, and system reliability.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation, and testing of data systems end-to-end.
• Build batch and real-time data pipelines to support products and business needs.
• Ensure data quality, performance, and stability with monitoring and QA practices.
• Design and optimize data models to meet complex product requirements.
• Collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and engineers to scale systems.
• Mentor teams and promote best practices in data governance and reliability.
• Shape long-term data strategies and influence engineering standards.

Skills

Data engineering leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Data modeling

SQL querying

Problem solving

Communication

Data quality & governance

Mentorship

Reliability engineering

Education

Bachelor’s/Master’s in CS/EE

PhD considered with 6+ years

Tools

Spark

Kafka

Flink

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Redshift

BigQuery

Python

Java/Scala

SQL

Job description

Airbnb is seeking a hands-on data engineering leader to guide the design, implementation, and operation of large-scale distributed data systems. You will drive data strategy, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and mentor engineers to ensure data quality and reliability across products and platforms.

The role emphasizes scalable architectures, governance, and driving long-term data engineering practices across the BizTech data ecosystem at Airbnb.