Senior Backend Architect - Distributed Systems (Remote)

OpenKrill; United States; Remote; USD 196,000 - 227,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Users Foundation team to design and build distributed, high-availability backend systems that scale with platform growth. You will own production services end-to-end, mentoring others and guiding cross-team technical decisions.

This role is US-based with remote eligibility, potentially requiring occasional onsite attendance. Strong communication and leadership are essential to collaborate across multiple engineering teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with experience owning production services end-to-end.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, including messaging/eventing, data consistency, and service reliability patterns.
• Experience building and operating high-traffic backend services.
• Track record of leading ambiguous, multi-month projects from problem definition through delivery.
• Experience driving technical decisions across team boundaries.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, especially for technical design and cross-team coordination.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate backend services and APIs that are core dependencies across Airbnb's platform.
• Lead multi-engineer projects end-to-end, from problem definition through rollout and operations.
• Improve the reliability and scalability of systems that handle account data and events at high volume.
• Partner with engineering teams across the company to plan and safely execute changes to shared infrastructure.
• Mentor other engineers and help raise the bar on code quality, testing, and operational excellence.

Skills

Distributed systems

Backend services

Leadership

Cross-team coordination

Communication

Job description

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Users Foundation team to design and build distributed, high-availability backend systems that scale with platform growth. You will own production services end-to-end, mentoring others and guiding cross-team technical decisions.

This role is US-based with remote eligibility, potentially requiring occasional onsite attendance. Strong communication and leadership are essential to collaborate across multiple engineering teams.