Software Engineer, Application Platform

Airbnb; United States; On-site; USD 162,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus eligibility

Equity

Employee Travel Credits

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking an engineer for the Application Platform team to design and maintain high-scale distributed services used by engineers and AI agents. You will own core features, implement robust production-grade systems, and expand observability while collaborating across product and infra teams.

You will work hands-on on critical-path services, drive feature rollouts, and contribute to on-call guidelines. A strong emphasis on AI-first approaches and technical communication is expected.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of industry experience.
• Experience working on distributed systems and evaluating trade-offs.
• Proficiency in Java, micro-services, observability systems, debugging distributed and multi-threaded systems.
• Embrace and engage in an AI-first engineering approach, using LLM-powered agents to generate and iterate on code while you focus on problem-solving, system design, and quality oversight.
• Proficiency in technical communication - writing design docs, presenting in design reviews, writing effective post-mortems, etc.
• Proactive, clear communication and collaboration within and across teams through code reviews and architecture discussions.
• Motivated to contribute to a positive team culture and building belonging together.
• Excited to join an impactful infrastructure team.

Responsibilities

• Designing and implementing distributed systems.
• Maintaining and debugging existing systems.
• Providing technical support to other engineers and developers.
• Staying current with emerging trends and technologies, especially in AI.
• Collaborating across Airbnb tech community and with external partners.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java

Micro-services

Observability

Debugging multi-threaded systems

AI-first engineering

Technical communication

Cross-team collaboration

Education

CS degree (Bachelor’s/Master’s)

CS degree or equivalent experience

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 Difference You Will Make:

The Application Platform team builds application-level building blocks that let every engineer and AI agent at Airbnb ship product behavior safely and quickly, without assembling or operating the underlying infrastructure.

A Typical Day:

This engineer will work on distributed systems with a focus on building and maintaining high scale services that are production facing and in the critical path of user requests. The systems owned by the team have a large number of critical services, and any downtime across these services can result in a hard downtime for the Airbnb platform. In addition, the team collaborates closely with the product and infra engineering teams to build new features and evolve the systems to meet the engineering challenges as the business is growing and evolving.

Your day-to-day responsibilities include:

• Designing and implementing distributed systems. The role is very hands-on and requires expertise in designing significant parts of the production services and systems, implementing core features in collaboration with other team members, formulating well-thought out rollout and testing plans, and participating in team’s on call.
• Maintaining and debugging existing systems. This could involve fixing bugs, improving test coverage, improving performance, contributing to production excellence, adding new features, code reviews and creating dashboards for better observability into the systems.
• Providing technical support to other engineers and developers. This could involve answering questions, debugging code, or helping to troubleshoot problems. Partner with stakeholders to understand their feature requests, design, implement and ship them as per expectations.
• Staying current with emerging trends and technologies. This includes reading blogs and research, taking courses, and considering the ideal future state of our systems. You will identify the technologies, particularly in AI, that can help us move toward that state
• Collaborating within and broadly across the Airbnb tech community. Working with other engineers on Airbnb wide initiatives, collaborating with external teams - partners and stakeholders, and ensuring that team success makes Airbnb platform and community successful.

Your Expertise:

• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience
• 3+ years of industry experience
• Experience working on distributed systems and evaluating trade-offs
• Proficiency in Java, micro-services, observability systems, debugging distributed and multi-threaded systems
• Embrace and engage in an AI-first engineering approach, using LLM-powered agents to generate and iterate on code while you focus on problem-solving, system design, and quality oversight.
• Proficiency in technical communication - writing design docs, presenting in design reviews, writing effective post-mortems, etc.
• Proactive, clear communication and collaboration within and across teams through code reviews and architecture discussions
• Motivated to contribute to a positive team culture and building belonging together
• Excited to join an impactful infrastructure team

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.

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.

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.

How We'll Take Care of You:

Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Pay Range

$162,000 — $190,000 USD

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.