Senior Staff Data Engineer: Foundational Data Platform

Bazeta; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Staff Data Engineer to lead the technical strategy for the Foundation Data team. You will design and implement foundational datasets, data models, and scalable pipelines that power product decisions and self-service analytics across the company.

You will mentor engineers, drive data standards, review designs, and partner with data scientists, product, and finance teams. The role is US remote eligible, with occasional office visits as needed.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience designing and building data pipelines and data models.
• Expertise in data modeling, including dimensional modeling and normalization.
• Experience with Airflow, SQL, and Spark (Python/Scala); DBT is a plus.
• Strong track record in optimizing query performance, cost, and reliability.
• Experience leading technical strategy and mentoring senior engineers.
• Excellent cross-functional communication with engineering, product, data science, and finance teams.
• Background in cloud-native data systems and distributed architectures.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own foundational data pipelines and data models.
• Lead architecture and infrastructure work to enhance foundational data capabilities.
• Partner with data scientists and product teams to define data models for self-service analytics.
• Drive data quality, monitoring, and reliability across pipelines.
• Set engineering best practices and data standards; lead technical design reviews.
• Mentor data engineers and guide the team on complex challenges.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners to align data infrastructure with business goals.

Skills

Data pipelines design

Data modeling

Mentoring

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

Education

Computer Science degree

Tools

Airflow

SQL

Spark (Python/Scala)

DBT

AWS

GCP

Snowflake

BigQuery

Databricks

Presto

Job description

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Staff Data Engineer to lead the technical strategy for the Foundation Data team. You will design and implement foundational datasets, data models, and scalable pipelines that power product decisions and self-service analytics across the company.

You will mentor engineers, drive data standards, review designs, and partner with data scientists, product, and finance teams. The role is US remote eligible, with occasional office visits as needed.