Staff Backend Engineer, AI-Powered Ads Platform

Airbnb; United States; On-site; USD 212,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus eligibility

Equity

Benefits

Employee Travel Credits

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Ads Platform to lead technical strategy and hands-on development of an AI-powered Growth Engine for paid campaigns across Google, Meta, and more. You will architect systems that manage creatives, bidding, budgets, audience, and feed intelligence at scale, driving ROAS and campaign velocity, with strong human-in-the-loop controls.

Join a cross-functional team collaborating with Marketing, Product, Design, and ML/AI teams to deliver autonomous,

Qualifications

• 9+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience.
• Technical leadership: leading project teams, setting direction, mentoring engineers.
• Passionate about efficiency, availability, technical quality and system quality.
• Desire to elevate teammates through curiosity and collaboration.
• Proven experience defining product/technical strategy with cross-functional leaders.
• Strong communication and collaboration across teams and leadership.
• Bonus: hands-on experience with paid advertising platforms (Meta/Google) beyond engineering surface.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the agentic Growth Engine and architecture decisions for creatives, bids, budgets, and audiences across paid channels.
• Write and review code, establishing standards for quality, availability, and health of the platform.
• Collaborate with Marketing, Product, and Design to translate growth objectives into platform capabilities and safe, on-brand controls.
• Advance the AI-assisted autonomous roadmap, identifying automation opportunities and de-risking via experimentation.
• Mentor engineers and act as a force multiplier through reviews and technical guidance.
• Partner with ML/AI and data teams on models and signals that feed campaign optimization and integrate with Airbnb’s product.

Skills

Hands-on software engineering

Technical leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Strong communication

Mentoring engineers

Strategy alignment with stakeholders

Paid ads platforms (bonus)

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Master’s degree

Job description

Airbnb is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Ads Platform to lead technical strategy and hands-on development of an AI-powered Growth Engine for paid campaigns across Google, Meta, and more. You will architect systems that manage creatives, bidding, budgets, audience, and feed intelligence at scale, driving ROAS and campaign velocity, with strong human-in-the-loop controls.

Join a cross-functional team collaborating with Marketing, Product, Design, and ML/AI teams to deliver autonomous,