Staff Data Engineer, Tech Foundations

Airbnb; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb is looking for a Staff Data Engineer to lead data pipelines that measure AI adoption and costs, connect revenue with cost drivers, and integrate enterprise applications like Jira. You will shape the data foundation across petabyte-scale datasets, ensuring correctness, performance, and cost efficiency.

You will mentor engineers, drive architectural decisions, and contribute to Airbnb's data engineering standards, while balancing long-term system health with immediate delivery needs.

Qualifications

• 9+ years of relevant industry experience with a degree in CS/EE or equivalent; or 6+ years with a PhD.
• Proven record leading complex data engineering initiatives from ambiguity to production ownership.
• Deep expertise in SQL and strong Python or Scala programming, with well-tested data systems.
• Extensive experience with distributed processing technologies like Apache Spark and large-scale analytical storage.
• Strong data modeling skills including facts/dimensions, slowly changing dimensions, and historical data management.
• Experience integrating heterogeneous sources (APIs, enterprise apps, event data, transactional systems) with evolving schemas.
• Proven ability to build reliable pipelines and perform migrations/backfills preserving correctness.
• Experience in data quality controls, observability, lineage, governance, and incident recovery.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture, implementation, and operation of high-impact data pipelines across AI usage, Unit Economics, and enterprise data.
• Partner with stakeholders to define AI adoption, usage, and spending metrics and build consistent data models.
• Evolve Unit Economics datasets to connect revenue and cost drivers for product profitability and efficiency.
• Build ingestion/transform pipelines for non-platform systems like Jira and other BizTech apps.
• Translate requirements into source contracts, reusable models, and technical designs.
• Develop configurable pipelines and shared components for onboarding new data sources and products.
• Establish automated testing, reconciliation, anomaly detection, and monitoring for data quality.
• Lead migrations and backfills with validation and controlled cutovers.

Skills

SQL

Python

Scala

Data modeling

Apache Spark

Data integration

Observability

Mentorship

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/EE

PhD (optional)

Tools

Apache Iceberg

Workflow orchestration

SQL transformation frameworks

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.

Staff Data Engineer, Enterprise Core Datasets, Tech Foundations

The Community You Will Join:

At Airbnb, trustworthy data powers business decisions, product innovation, and operational efficiency. The Enterprise Core Datasets team builds the technical data foundations that help Airbnb understand how the business operates, where resources are invested, and how new technologies create value.

Our scope spans high-impact datasets across the organization: measuring AI adoption, usage, and cost; understanding revenue, costs, and profitability through Unit Economics; integrating non-platform data from Jira and other enterprise applications; and powering critical company metrics such as Gross Booking Value and Revenue.

The Difference You Will Make:

As a Staff Data Engineer, you will provide hands‑on technical leadership for datasets that shape decisions across Airbnb. Your work will help the organization measure AI adoption and spending, understand the economics of its products, and connect enterprise application data to meaningful business and operational insights.

You will lead complex initiatives from problem definition and architectural design through implementation, validation, and production operations. You will build extensible data foundations that accommodate new AI tools, products, cost categories, and enterprise systems while maintaining clear definitions, traceability, and reliable historical data. Operating in an ecosystem that includes petabyte‑scale datasets, you will improve correctness, freshness, performance, and cost efficiency. You will develop reusable frameworks that simplify source onboarding, reduce duplicated logic, and make critical data easier to discover and use. Through mentorship and contributions to Airbnb's shared data engineering tools and standards, your impact will extend across the data community.

A Typical Day:

• Lead the 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.

Your Expertise:

• 9+ years of relevant industry experience with a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience; or 6+ years of relevant experience with a PhD.
• A track record of leading complex data engineering initiatives from ambiguous requirements through architecture, delivery, and sustained production ownership.
• Deep expertise in SQL and strong programming skills in Python or Scala, with experience building maintainable, well‑tested data systems.
• Extensive experience with distributed processing technologies such as Apache Spark and large-scale analytical storage systems.
• Strong data modeling skills, including fact and dimension design, slowly changing dimensions, incremental processing, and historical data management.
• Experience integrating heterogeneous sources, including APIs, enterprise applications, event data, and transactional systems, while managing schema changes and source reliability.
• Proven ability to build reliable pipelines and execute migrations and backfills while preserving correctness and downstream compatibility.
• Experience establishing data quality controls, observability, lineage, governance, and effective incident recovery practices.
• Strong performance engineering skills, including diagnosing bottlenecks and optimizing distributed computation, storage, and query execution.
• The ability to align stakeholders across engineering and business functions, communicate architectural tradeoffs, and drive decisions across team boundaries.
• Demonstrated technical leadership through mentorship, architectural guidance, and improvements to shared engineering practices.
• Curiosity and sound judgment when learning new domains and balancing immediate delivery needs with long‑term system health.

Experience with AI usage or cost measurement, cloud cost attribution, Unit Economics, enterprise application data, or financial and payments datasets is a plus. Familiarity with workflow orchestration, SQL transformation frameworks, and modern table formats such as Apache Iceberg is also valuable.

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

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.