Staff Software Engineer, Data Authoring

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

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Staff Software Engineer focused on Minerva, its data-authoring platform. You will own high-impact workstreams, talk to users, define scope, and deliver end-to-end solutions, enabling thousands of internal users to trust and consume business metrics across product, finance, BI, and experimentation.

You will collaborate with engineers, designers, and product leaders to advance data tooling, improve experiment speed, and shape how Minerva serves experimentation teams and other

Qualifications

• 9+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Proficiency in at least one modern general-purpose language.
• Experience with data platforms or data tooling.
• Ability to independently scope and drive ambiguous cross-team projects.
• Strong command of OO, API design, and distributed systems patterns.
• Strong communication across complex team interfaces.

Responsibilities

• Build and extend Minerva's core services, including our query rewriting service.
• Take on loosely defined problems, scope with users and teams, and deliver solutions.
• Track semantic layer techniques and database engine capabilities to inform priorities.
• Partner with teams across the company to make data easier to query and use.
• Own design, implementation, testing, and on-call for the systems you build.

Skills

Hands-on coding

Multiple languages

API design

Distributed systems

Cross-team collaboration

Communication

Tools

dbt

Tableau

Superset

Data DSLs

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 Community you will join

Airbnb's Data Authoring Platform exists to turn raw data into decision-grade insight, fast, reliable, and at scale. We provide a single, paved path for 4,000+ internal data producers and consumers to model, transform, and serve trustworthy data and metrics that power everything from A/B experimentation to executive dashboards.

What we own:

• Minerva, Airbnb's semantic layer & metrics platform, ensuring one definition of truth across the company.
• The end-to-end data-authoring framework that cuts through pipeline boilerplate and accelerates iteration, pipeline testing, and validation.
• Tooling for reliability, governance, and cost-efficiency, including automated testing, anomaly detection, and right-sized materialization.

The difference you will make

As a Staff Software Engineer focused on Minerva, you will own and drive high-impact workstreams end to end. You'll take ambiguous problem spaces, such as making experimentation faster and easier, talk to users, define the work, and deliver it. Your work will help thousands of internal users define, understand, and consume trustworthy business metrics across product, finance, BI, and experimentation.

Engineers, designers, and product leaders rely on these tools to explore and develop new product experiences and to run experiments that tell them what is right for our customers. Depending on your background, you may partner closely with the experimentation team to find gaps and shape how Minerva serves them.

We believe data is the voice of our customers at scale. The tools you build will help improve the Airbnb product for every guest and host.

A typical day

• Build and extend Minerva's core services, including our query rewriting service.
• Take on loosely defined problems, partner with users and teams to scope them, and propose and deliver solutions.
• Track semantic layer techniques and database engine capabilities to inform priorities.
• Partner with teams across the company to make data easier to query and use.
• Own design, implementation, testing, and on-call for the systems you build.

Your expertise

• 9+ years of hands‑on software engineering, with the majority of your time spent building and deploying production applications and services (rather than writing configuration and SQL).
• Deep proficiency in at least one modern general‑purpose language (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Scala, Go, Python, TypeScript).
• Experience working on data platforms or data tooling, with a good understanding of why users want to do what they do with data. Prior data engineering or data science experience is a plus, but software engineering should be your primary focus.
• Demonstrated ability to independently scope and drive ambiguous, cross‑team projects from design through launch.
• Strong command of OOP, API design, and distributed systems patterns.
• Strong communication skills and experience working across complex team and system interfaces.

Nice to haves

• Experience with experimentation platforms (assignment, metrics, analysis, or experiment tooling).
• Experience with metrics, semantic layer, BI, or analytics platforms (e.g., dbt, Tableau, Superset).
• Experience with query engines, query rewriting/optimization, or data warehouse internals.
• Experience authoring DSLs, compilers, or APIs that abstract data transformations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

$212,000 — $265,000 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.