Staff Data Engineer: Enterprise Data Foundations

Airbnb; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Staff Data Engineer to lead enterprise core datasets and cost metrics, shaping decisions across AI usage, revenue, and product economics. You will own data pipelines, drive architectural choices, and mentor engineers across teams.

This role requires a deep background in SQL, Spark, and scalable data systems, with the ability to translate complex requirements into reliable, reusable data assets. Remote-Eligible US; collaboration with BizTech and product stakeholders expected.

Qualifications

• Leads complex data engineering initiatives from ambiguous requirements to architecture and production ownership.
• Strong SQL and Python/Scala programming abilities; maintainable data systems.
• Experience with distributed processing such as Spark and large-scale analytical storage.
• Proficient in data modeling, including fact and dimension design and slowly changing dimensions.
• Experience integrating heterogeneous sources and managing schema changes and source reliability.
• Ability to establish data quality controls, observability, lineage, governance, and incident recovery practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture, implementation, and operation of high-impact data pipelines across AI usage and cost, Unit Economics, enterprise applications, and critical Financial metrics.
• Partner with stakeholders to define how AI adoption, consumption, and spending are measured across the organization, and build consistent data models that support those definitions.
• Evolve Unit Economics datasets to connect revenue and diverse cost drivers, enabling teams to understand product profitability and resource efficiency.
• Build reliable ingestion and transformation pipelines for non-platform systems such as Jira and other BizTech enterprise applications.
• Translate ambiguous requirements into clear source contracts, reusable fact and dimension models, and technical designs.
• Develop configurable pipelines and shared components that simplify onboarding new data sources, products, and business requirements.
• Establish automated testing, reconciliation, anomaly detection, and monitoring to protect data accuracy, completeness, and availability.
• Lead safe migrations and historical backfills through dependency analysis, validation, controlled cutovers, and recovery planning.
• Optimize distributed processing, storage, and query performance to improve freshness and reduce compute costs.
• Own production reliability through on-call participation, incident response, and lasting improvements to systems and runbooks.
• Shape the technical roadmap, lead design reviews, mentor engineers, and contribute improvements to Airbnb’s Data Engineering Paved Path.

Skills

SQL

Python

Scala

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Apache Spark

Apache Iceberg

Job description

Airbnb is seeking a Staff Data Engineer to lead enterprise core datasets and cost metrics, shaping decisions across AI usage, revenue, and product economics. You will own data pipelines, drive architectural choices, and mentor engineers across teams.

This role requires a deep background in SQL, Spark, and scalable data systems, with the ability to translate complex requirements into reliable, reusable data assets. Remote-Eligible US; collaboration with BizTech and product stakeholders expected.