Staff Backend Engineer: AI-Powered Ads Growth Platform

airbnb, Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 200,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus eligibility

Equity

Employee Travel Credits

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Ads Platform to lead the technical strategy and hands-on execution of an AI-powered Growth Engine for paid campaigns across Google, Meta, and beyond. You will architect systems that autonomously manage campaigns, creatives, bids, budgets, and audiences at scale, with strong emphasis on safety, quality, and human-in-the-loop controls.

You will partner with Marketing, Product and Design to translate growth objectives into platform capabilities,

Qualifications

• 9+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in CS or equivalent.
• Technical leadership: leading project teams and setting technical direction.
• Strong focus on efficiency, availability, and system quality.
• Experience defining product/technical strategy with cross-functional alignment.
• Bonus: hands-on experience with paid advertising platforms (Meta/Google).

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the agentic Growth Engine across paid channels (Google, Meta, etc.).
• Write and review code, establishing engineering standards for quality and reliability.
• Partner with Marketing, Product and Design to translate growth objectives into platform capabilities.
• Advance the AI-assisted autonomous roadmap and de-risk rollout through staged experimentation.
• Mentor engineers and drive design reviews to raise overall team capabilities.
• Collaborate with ML/AI and data platform teams on models and signals feeding campaign optimization.

Skills

Hands-on engineering

Technical leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

System design

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in CS

Job description

Airbnb is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Ads Platform to lead the technical strategy and hands-on execution of an AI-powered Growth Engine for paid campaigns across Google, Meta, and beyond. You will architect systems that autonomously manage campaigns, creatives, bids, budgets, and audiences at scale, with strong emphasis on safety, quality, and human-in-the-loop controls.

You will partner with Marketing, Product and Design to translate growth objectives into platform capabilities,