Senior Software Engineer, Payments Platform

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

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Payments Platform. The role focuses on designing and building scalable payment systems with cross-functional teams, emphasizing reliability and performance.

The candidate will lead and mentor engineers, shape technical strategy, and drive alignment across product and leadership teams. Remote-eligible in the U.S., with expectations to collaborate across time zones and regions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• 1+ years in Payments/Fintech backend is a plus.
• Experience leading design, implementation, and deployment of high-scale payment systems.
• Technical leadership: setting direction and mentoring engineers.
• Strong communication and collaboration across teams and stakeholders.
• Proven ability to define product/technical strategy and drive alignment.

Responsibilities

• Work on multi-team initiatives and identify opportunities for business impact.
• Architect and implement complex features with data-driven decisions and performance optimizations.
• Collaborate with other engineering teams to advance processes and foundations.
• Drive systemic improvements to reduce toil and improve quality and reliability.
• Mentor junior engineers through design reviews and knowledge-sharing sessions.

Skills

Hands-on software engineering

Payments/Fintech backend

Technical leadership

Mentoring engineers

Communication & collaboration

System design & scalability

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in CS or equivalent

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, Payments Platform

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:

Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. Airbnb Payments team supports this mission by economically empowering Airbnb businesses and our global community of guests and hosts.

Airbnb Payments team allows any two people in the world to frictionlessly exchange money with easy to use payments services. It is a core strategy to fulfill Airbnb’s belongs anywhere mission.We are building a world-class payments platform that moves billions of dollars, in 191 countries, with 75 currencies, through a complex ecosystem of payments partners. We build and maintain our own in-house global payments platform because no solution exists with the global reach needed. As the platform grows we’ll be adding new payment partners, global licenses, compliance and regulation controls, and building new payment experiences for our guests and hosts.

Payments Transactions team and Payments Payouts team are part of the core platform of the Airbnb Payments ecosystem. The teams are building the core billing system and payouts system for Airbnb money movements. The team engineers are responsible for the seamless orchestration and recording of Airbnb’s payment obligations with our community. They initiate, advance, and realize Airbnb’s payment commitments with our community in a way that is reliable, accurate, timely, scalable, and auditable.

The Difference You Will Make:

We are looking for talented and self-motivated Senior Software Engineers who are passionate about working in this highly dynamic domain and collaborating with world-class XFN teams to advance our mission. As part of the Payments Engineering team, you will be in charge of designing and building a wide range of scalable systems. You will be involved in the technical details of building highly available services in close collaboration with product, data science and operations teams to understand and react to the ever evolving business needs and to make Airbnb the world’s safest while easiest to use payments platform.

A Typical Day:

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Payments Platform, you will:

• Work on multi-team technical initiatives, and work cross-functionally to identify opportunities for business impact, refine, and prioritize requirements for engineering systems.
• Architect and implement complex features, focusing on data-driven decision making and performance optimizations.
• Work with other engineering teams to advance Airbnb’s engineering processes and technical foundations
• Work on systemic improvements by identifying patterns to streamline development, reduce toil and increase technical quality and operational excellence over time.
• Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior engineers through design reviews, code walkthroughs, and knowledge-sharing sessions, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous learning.
• 5+ years of experience in a hands-on software engineering role.
• 1+ years of relevant industry experience (Payments/Fintech) as a backend software engineer is plus.
• Experience leading design, implementation, and deployment of one or more high scale, cross-functional payment systems.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience
• Technical leadership: hands on experience leading project teams, setting technical direction and strategy and mentoring engineers.
• Passionate about efficiency, availability, technical quality and system quality.
• Passion to level-up those around you through curiosity and fostering a collaborative and inclusive team environment.
• Proven experience in defining product/technical strategy and driving alignment with cross-functional leaders and stakeholders.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with experience driving initiatives that span across teams, departments and leadership.

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.