Senior Software Engineer Guest & Host

Xapply; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design and scale backend systems for user identity and privacy. You will own authorization logic, data modeling, and migrations, ensuring safety at Airbnb’s scale.

You will collaborate with teams across messaging, trips, and profile to make privacy primitives usable while maintaining strong code quality and reliability.

Qualifications

• 6+ years backend experience in service-oriented architecture, API design and data modeling.
• Proficiency in Java and/or Kotlin, with microservices experience.
• Design systems where correctness and authorization are core concerns.
• Track record shipping migrations or infrastructure changes relied on by teams.
• Strong written communication across teams and stakeholders.
• Ability to turn evolving privacy/identity requirements into concrete designs.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend services and APIs enforcing identity and privacy rules across product surfaces.
• Contribute to large-scale migrations and safe tooling.
• Define and evolve authorization logic for context-scoped data access.
• Partner with teams (messaging, trips, profile, etc.) to ensure privacy primitives are usable and safe.
• Participate in design and code reviews and perform root-cause analysis for production issues.

Skills

Backend fundamentals

Java/Kotlin

Microservices

Authorization design

Migrations/infrastructure

Communication skills

Ambiguity tolerance

Tools

RPC frameworks

Service IDLs

Dependency Injection

Job description

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:

Guest & Host Technology builds the end-to-end experience that connects people around the world. Our team owns the identity and privacy layer beneath that experience: the systems that determine who can see what about whom, in what context, and why. That includes migrating how the rest of the company references users (moving from raw, global user identifiers to relationship-scoped identity), and building the privacy controls behind features like trip sharing and profile visibility. Get this layer wrong and it either breaks trust or breaks the product; our job is to make sure it does neither.

The Difference You Will Make:

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help build and scale the backend systems behind user identity and privacy. You'll be reasoning about relationship-scoped access (who's allowed to see this, given the specific context they're asking from), and building systems that other teams across the company depend on to do the same correctly.

You'll work across true backend fundamentals: service architecture, data modeling, authorization logic, and migration tooling that needs to run safely at Airbnb's scale without breaking the dozens of teams who consume these systems.

A Typical Day:

• Design and build backend services and APIs that enforce identity and privacy rules consistently across the company's product surfaces
• Contribute to large-scale migrations (e.g., moving service and client code off legacy identity patterns) — including the tooling that makes those migrations safe to run broadly, not just the one-off fixes
• Define and evolve authorization logic for context-scoped data access, and reason clearly about edge cases (e.g., who's allowed to see what, and why that answer differs by relationship or product surface)
• Partner with the teams building on top of your systems — messaging, trips, profile, and beyond — to make sure privacy primitives are usable and hard to misuse
• Participate in design and code reviews, and raise the bar for correctness on a part of the codebase where mistakes are costly
• Debug and resolve production issues with clear, structured root-cause analysis rather than surface-level fixes

Your Expertise:

• 6+ years of professional backend software engineering experience, with strong fundamentals in service-oriented architecture, API design, and data modeling
• Proficiency in Java and/or Kotlin, and comfort working within a microservices environment (RPC frameworks, service IDLs, dependency injection)
• Experience designing systems with correctness and authorization as first-class concerns, not an afterthought
• A track record of shipping migrations or infrastructure changes that other teams depend on, with attention to backward compatibility and rollout safety
• Strong written communication. You can clearly document a problem, its root cause, and trade-offs between solutions before escalating or proposing a fix
• Comfort with ambiguity: you can take a complex, evolving privacy or identity requirement and turn it into a concrete technical design without needing every detail spelled out

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list . If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

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.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

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.

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.