Machine Learning Engineer, Assistance Engineering

airbnb, Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 162,000 - 186,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb, Inc. is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer for Assistance Engineering to advance the evolution of AI-powered customer experiences. You will contribute to building scalable ML systems, chat AI assistants, and agentic architectures to improve guest and host interactions.

The role emphasizes collaboration with product and design, hands-on ML work, and deploying models in production, with emphasis on SFT, RLHF, RAG, and memory-enabled reasoning.

Qualifications

• PhD or Masters degree in CS/ML/AI or related field, or equivalent industry experience.
• Hands-on expertise with LLMs including pretraining, fine-tuning, and evaluation.
• Experience shipping production-grade ML/AI systems at scale.
• Strong communication and collaboration with cross-functional teams.
• Familiarity with agentic AI, multi-agent orchestration and tool use.

Responsibilities

• Champion the development of novel ML systems and performance optimizations.
• Work cross-functionally with product, design, and engineering to build AI solutions.
• Learn and share the latest AI/ML technologies with the team.

Skills

LLM development

Agentic AI

ML infrastructure

MLOps practices

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

PhD or Masters degree w/ 3+ YOE in Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI or related field, or equivalent industry experience

Tools

SFT

RLHF

GRPO

RAG

LangGraph

AutoGen

Job description

Machine Learning Engineer, Assistance Engineering

Remote-USA

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

The Community You Will Join:

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are at the heart of the Airbnb product. From Trust to Payments, and from Customer Service to Marketing we rely on ML to ensure that guests and hosts have the best possible experience with Airbnb.
The Core ML team in Assistance Engineering is the team responsible for adopting the Agentic AI technologies to enable an intelligent, scalable and exceptional customer service experience. We are responsible for developing the Chat AI assistant, Voice AI Assistant and more! The team is constantly exploring the SOTA Agentic architecture, develops and enhances various AI models, ML services and leverages tools including SFT, Reinforcement learning, Distillation, RAG/Search, LLM evaluation and testing automation, feedback-based learning and guardrail for a wide range of applications in Airbnb.

The Difference You Will Make:

We believe our current customer experiences in these domains are only scratching the surface of the innovations that are possible, and that science is at the heart of delivering a step-function change for our Guest and and Host on Airbnb.
You will build and leverage cutting edge AI technologies to transform Airbnb’s customer service by delivering personalized, easy-to-use and proactive customer service experience.
Many of the initiatives you’ll tackle are in their early conceptual stages. You will have the opportunity to shape these ideas from inception to production, turning visionary concepts into impactful realities.

A Typical Day:

• Champion the development of novel ML systems, product integrations, and performance optimizations to solve real-world problems
• Work cross-functionally with product, design, and other engineering counterparts to design and build efficient AI solutions for Airbnb CS products
• Learn and share the latest AI/ML technologies with the team.

Your Expertise:

• PhD or Master's degree w/ 3+ YOE in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field — or equivalent industry experience
• Hands-on expertise in LLM, including pretraining, fine-tuning (SFT, RLHF, GRPO), prompt engineering, RAG architectures, and LLM evaluation frameworks
• Experience building Agentic AI systems — including multi-agent orchestration, tool-use, planning, memory, and autonomous reasoning pipelines (e.g., ReAct, LangGraph, AutoGen, or similar)
• Experience of shipping production-grade ML/AI systems at scale, with deep understanding of ML infrastructure, model serving, and MLOps best practices
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to collaborate effectively across Engineering, Product, and Design organizations

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: [e-mail] . 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.

Airbnb values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Airbnb are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic.

How We'll Take Care of You:

Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Pay Range

$162,000 — $186,000 USD

Reasonable Accommodations: We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.