Senior Software Engineer, Payments Transaction Risk

airbnb, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb, Inc. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for Payments Transaction Risk to design and build scalable risk systems across the payments platform. You will partner with data science, product, and operations teams to detect fraud and mitigate risk in real time.

You will own APIs, data pipelines, and integrations with payment networks, while emphasizing observability, testing, and high availability. Remote-eligible role based in the US with occasional on-site meetings.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend software engineering in Payments/Fintech.
• Proficient in Java, Kotlin or Python; React experience a plus.
• Experience with large-scale web apps, APIs, data pipelines, and algorithms.
• Commitment to high code quality, testing, and best practices.
• Experience in cross-functional collaboration with product, data science and operations.
• Familiarity with experimentation and machine learning techniques.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s in CS or equivalent experience.
• Experience in fraud/spam detection in payments is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable risk services for the payments platform.
• Collaborate with data scientists, product, and operations to derive insights and respond to fraud.
• Integrate with third-party vendors, networks, and processors for risk systems.
• Improve risk detection, mitigation, and resolution strategies as requirements evolve.
• Ensure continuous monitoring and observability of risk systems.
• Drive engineering practices and collaboration across Airbnb teams.

Skills

Backend engineering

Java

Kotlin

Python

React

API design

Data pipelines

Automated testing

ML awareness

Education

CS degree

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, Payments Transaction Risk

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 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.

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 Risk Engineering team, you will be in charge of designing and building a wide range of scalable systems and robust infrastructure to detect, mitigate and resolve risk issues across our entire payments platform, and to protect our communities and businesses from all malicious activities and fraudulent actors. You will be deeply involved in the technical details of building highly available and real‑time risk services in close collaboration with product, data science and operations teams to understand and react to the ever evolving risk scenarios and to make Airbnb the world’s safest while easiest to use payments platform.

A Typical Day:

• Building and maintaining a long‑term technology stack with well defined APIs that is service‑oriented, modular, granular, observable, and efficient.
• Working closely with data scientists, product managers and other XFN partners to build business insights, develop product services and respond to fraud attacks and risk items across the platform.
• Building and maintaining integrations with third party vendors / payments networks & processors to empower our in house risk systems.
• Developing and iterating on our risk detection, mitigation and resolution strategies as risk scenarios/business requirements evolve.
• Focusing on continuous monitoring and alerting to uplevel the quality and observability of our risk systems.
• Collaborating with other engineering teams across Airbnb to advance our engineering process and technical foundation.

Your Expertise:

• 5+ years of relevant industry experience (Payments/Fintech) as a backend software engineer.
• Proficient in at least one major programming language (preferably Java/Kotlin/Python). Experience in React (or any equivalent JS library) would be nice to have.
• Exposure to architectural patterns of large, high-scale web applications, such as well-designed APIs, high volume data pipelines, and efficient algorithms.
• Passion for delivering products end‑to‑end, from ideation through planning and scoping to implementation and experimental A/B testing.
• Rigor in high code quality, automated testing, and other engineering best practices.
• Experience or desire to work collaboratively in cross‑functional teams with product, data scientists, design and operations.
• Familiarity with experimentation and machine learning techniques
• Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills and detail oriented.
• Capable of making data driven decisions and articulating tradeoffs in any technical decisions.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience.
• Experience in fraud/spam detection/mitigation in the payments domain is a huge plus, but not required.

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.

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.