Senior Data Scientist – Payments (Inference)

airbnb, Inc.; Northern (KY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Equity

Travel credits

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Data Scientist for Payments (Inference) to lead quantitative measurement efforts across the platform’s payment experience. This role focuses on causal inference, ML model development, and fraud mitigation to drive safer, more efficient money movement at global scale.

The successful candidate will own complex analyses, build robust evaluation frameworks, and communicate insights to leadership.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of industry experience in quantitative analysis with a Master’s degree, or 3+ years with a PhD.
• Strong knowledge of causal inference, experimentation, applied statistical modeling, and end-to-end ML development.
• Proficiency with Python or R and SQL.
• Demonstrated ability to own a domain end-to-end and drive impact.
• Excellent communication across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Payments Fraud/Risk domain knowledge is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Develop and apply causal inference methods, including experiments and quasi-experimental designs, to measure platform impacts.
• Build and evaluate ML models and agentic systems for payments optimization and risk.
• Create robust data products and visualizations; communicate findings to partners.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and finance to drive data-informed decisions.

Skills

Causal inference

Statistics

ML development

SQL

Education

Master’s degree in quantitative field

PhD degree

Tools

Python

R

SQL

Job description

Senior Data Scientist - Payments (Inference)

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:

You will join the Payments Data Science organization, which sits at the intersection of Trust and Payments and powers the systems that move money safely and efficiently across Airbnb's global marketplace. The team spans payment optimization for guests and hosts, fraud and risk mitigation, complex measurement, and regulatory compliance. We partner directly with Payments product and engineering leadership, Finance, and Trust to ensure every transaction is fast, safe, and compliant at global scale. Our work directly shapes decisions made by senior leaders, including Payments executive leadership, and requires a rigorous, evidence-based approach to every recommendation we make. Our Data Science team enables this mission by providing reliable measurement frameworks to deliver robust data insights, build and enable state-of-the-art data products/models, and provide actionable and reliable business guidance.

The Difference You Will Make:

We are looking for a passionate data scientist to lead quantitative measurement efforts and bring novel scientific approaches to drive decision making across our platform’s payment experience. This data scientist will perform careful hypothesis generation, causal inference framework development, and model development/evaluation to ideate and drive payment strategies on our platform. This role will have a particular focus on payments fraud mitigation and loss optimization, with the goal of making our platform safer for our community.

Our Data Scientists have a deep understanding of causal framework development, statistical analysis, machine learning model development and evaluation strategies, and the complications of running experiment/quasi-experimental methods in a two-sided marketplace. They have keen business sense and are able to develop novel solutions to fraud and risk problems that don't have an established playbook and utilize their findings to communicate across a wide range of partners to drive our data & product roadmaps. They are not only the trusted data expert on their team, but also a storyteller.

Examples of projects you may work on include, development of novel metrics and frameworks that can efficiently measure outcomes (often balancing competing tradeoffs), generating deep root cause investigations and long term impact measurements, and building/evaluating ML and agentic models to optimize guest, host, and business outcomes.

A Typical Day:

• Inference: Develop and apply causal inference methods, including experimental, econometric regressions, and quasi-experimental methods to measure a wide-range of platform/product impacts.
• AI/ML: Build methods for robust evaluation of ML/AI model efficiency and performance. Ability to identify use-cases for and develop predictive models to classify, segment, and interpret our users’ behavior. Support evaluation and optimization of agentic and LLM-based systems.
• Optimization:Develop methodologies to explore/simulate the impact of new interventions and develop data products to optimize product/operational strategies.
• Communication:Deliver robust research reports and effective data visualizations. Collaborate with and present to stakeholders to identify opportunities and communicate findings, and drive impact.
• Empowerment:Think strategically about opportunities to improve and scale our brand measurement and customer insights.

Your Expertise:

• 5+ years of industry experience in a quantitative analysis role with a Master’s degree in a quantitative field (math / economics / statistics, and etc.), or 3+ years of experience with a Phd degree.
• Strong knowledge of causal inference, experimentation, applied statistical modeling, and end-to-end ML development.
• Skilled in statistical programming (Python or R) and database usage (SQL)
• Demonstrated track record of owning a business or technical domain end-to-end at a prior company: setting your own roadmap, being the accountable expert others escalate to, and driving a problem to resolution.
• Proven ability to communicate clearly and effectively to audiences of varying technical levels
• Ability to work independently, set your own roadmap, and drive cross-functional alignment
• Payments Fraud/Risk Domain expertise is a strong plus.
• Familiarity with evaluating agentic or LLM-based systems (e.g., decision-quality measurement, human-in-the-loop calibration) is a plus.

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.

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.