Senior Staff Engineer – Listings & Quality Backend

airbnb, Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 248,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Equity

Benefits

Employee Travel Credits

Job summary

Airbnb, Inc. is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to set the technical direction for the backend platforms underpinning the Guest & Host marketplace. You will shape APIs, data models, and architecture to support AI-assisted features and scale across listings, experiences, and services.

You will lead the multi-year strategy, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and mentor engineers to raise the bar for reliability and platform quality.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in tech industry, including 4+ years as Architect or Staff Engineer overseeing large-scale systems.
• Strong product and platform judgment; design for product velocity and AI clients.
• Track record of multi-year technical vision delivery and platform consolidation or migrations.
• Deep backend expertise in distributed systems, data modeling, and API design for large-scale platforms.

Responsibilities

• Set the multi-year technical strategy and roadmap for Listings and Quality backend.
• Partner with AI Platform, Trust, Infrastructure, and Product teams to shape architecture and contracts.
• Design APIs, data models, and provenance to support AI-assisted features and agents.
• Drive platformization, generalization of shared capabilities, and self-service for product teams.

Skills

Multi-year strategy

Platform ownership

Backend architecture

Java/Kotlin

API design

Data modeling

Data provenance

Distributed systems

Mentorship

Communication across orgs

Job description

Airbnb, Inc. is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to set the technical direction for the backend platforms underpinning the Guest & Host marketplace. You will shape APIs, data models, and architecture to support AI-assisted features and scale across listings, experiences, and services.

You will lead the multi-year strategy, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and mentor engineers to raise the bar for reliability and platform quality.