Senior Software Engineer, Assistance Engineering

airbnb, Inc.; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 196,000 - 227,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

equity participation

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for Assistance Engineering in San Francisco. You will help design and scale backend systems supporting intelligent routing and AI-driven customer experiences.

The role emphasizes ownership of routing infrastructure, collaboration with Product, Operations, Data Science, and partner teams, and mentoring engineers to uphold engineering excellence. Base pay aligns with market norms for a senior backend role at Airbnb.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software development experience in service-oriented architectures and backend development.
• Experience designing and iterating on prompt engineering to fine-tune AI capabilities for AI/LLM-driven scenarios.
• Familiarity with RAG patterns, memory routing, and agent planning.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Operations, Data Science, and partner engineering teams to align on priorities and deliver outcomes.
• Own and evolve core routing infrastructure, including decision engines, workflow orchestration, and routing rule management.
• Contribute to technical quality through design reviews, code reviews, and pragmatic architectural decision-making.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to a culture of continuous improvement and engineering excellence.
• Participate in on-call rotations, incident response, and post-mortems to ensure reliability of routing infrastructure.

Skills

Backend development

Service-oriented architectures

Workflow optimization

Prompt engineering

AI/LLM integration

Cross-team collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD in Computer Science

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, Assistance Engineering

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:

Providing world-class customer service for our community of guests and hosts is a critical mission at Airbnb. The Ambassador Routing & Channels (ARC) team sits within Airbnb Community Support and is responsible for powering intelligent, differentiated service experiences, ensuring every support request, across any channel, is addressed by the right expert at the right time. Our work directly drives faster resolutions, higher quality interactions, and exceptional customer satisfaction at scale.

The Difference You Will Make:

As a Senior Backend Engineer on the ARC team, you will contribute meaningfully across our core routing and differentiated service programs:

• Contribute to and lead engineering delivery on programs that enable intelligent agent matching, personalized support experiences for high-value customers, and next-generation routing and communication channel capabilities.


• Own and evolve core routing infrastructure, including decision engines, workflow orchestration, and routing rule management. Ensuring high availability, correctness, and scalability across millions of daily support interactions.


• Help drive consolidation of fragmented routing logic spread across multiple platforms and channels into a centralized, auditable, and maintainable system.


• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Operations, Data Science, and partner engineering teams to align on priorities and deliver outcomes that improve the customer support experience.


• Contribute to technical quality through design reviews, code reviews, and pragmatic architectural decision-making.


• Support the team's technical growth by mentoring junior engineers and contributing to a culture of continuous improvement and engineering excellence.

A Typical Day:

• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, engineering, and data science teams to develop backend systems and enhance AI prompt effectiveness for routing and differentiated service experiences.


• Lead and contribute across the full development lifecycle: technical design, implementation, testing, experimentation, and production deployment.


• Contribute to a culture of engineering excellence by role modeling best practices in design, code quality, and cross-functional collaboration.


• Participate in on-call rotations, incident response, and post-mortems to ensure the reliability of routing infrastructure serving millions of Airbnb guests and hosts.


• Engage in sprint planning, backlog grooming, and design doc sharing sessions to keep ARC's delivery on track.


• Optimize system availability, performance, and scalability while pushing enhancements for improved efficiency across AI-driven routing workflows.


• Collaborate with cross-regional engineering partners to align on shared routing capabilities and drive consistency across global support operations.

Your Expertise:

• 6+ years of software development experience in service-oriented architectures and backend development.


• Expertise in workflow optimization and backend systems, with a focus on scalable and flexible architecture.


• Experience designing and iterating on prompt engineering to fine-tune AI capabilities for AI/LLM-driven scenarios.


• Familiarity with RAG patterns, memory routing, and agent planning.


• Proficiency in crafting backend systems focusing on technical quality, efficiency, and resilience.


• Excellent collaboration and communication skills to work effectively across teams and domains.


• Passion for agile development, system optimization, and team productivity enhancements.


• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s/Ph.D. degree, preferably in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.

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.

Pay Range

$196,000 — $227,000 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.