Staff Software Engineer, Passport & Commerce (Backend)

airbnb, Inc.; Northern (KY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Airbnb is seeking a Staff Software Engineer on the Passport team to architect the next generation of the account platform, influencing how millions of guests and hosts experience Airbnb.

You will set technical direction for account state, eligibility, and entitlements, ensuring scalable, reliable delivery across surfaces while collaborating with Payments, Privacy, and product partners to stand up new offerings.

Qualifications

• 9+ years of experience designing and scaling complex, distributed backend systems.
• Track record as a technical leader who has set architecture direction for a team or domain.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems fundamentals, including data consistency, caching, service decomposition, and API design at scale.
• Experience building or operating systems involving financial transactions, entitlements, or other stateful account data is strongly preferred.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical decisions across multiple teams.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity on a newly formed team, including helping define team scope, roadmap, and technical foundations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across engineering, product, and design partners.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve the core services and data models that track account state, eligibility, and entitlements across millions of accounts
• Partner with product and design to translate new product concepts into scalable, extensible technical designs
• Collaborate with Payments and Wallet engineering to ensure credits, discounts, and host-funded programs settle correctly end-to-end
• Set technical direction and lead design reviews across a growing team, mentoring engineers and raising the bar on system design
• Drive cross-team architecture decisions with Identity & Privacy and Profile & Community teams to keep account state consistent with Airbnb's broader Passport model
• Identify and resolve reliability, scalability, and data-integrity risks before they affect guests or hosts

Skills

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Architecture direction

Mentoring engineers

Communication

Ambiguity handling

Job description

United States

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:

Passport & Commerce builds the trusted account and commerce foundation that lets anyone, anywhere, become part of the Airbnb community — from their first sign-up, through the profile and connections they build, to every booking and business transaction along the way.

We're a newly formed org within Guest & Host that brings together identity, account, and commerce foundations under one roof. Our mission is to move Airbnb beyond the transaction — building a world where accounts create trust, value sticks, and what our community earns travels with them, and their businesses, wherever they go.

You'll work closely with Payments and Wallet engineering, Identity & Privacy, Profile & Community, and Guest & Host product, design, and data science partners as we stand up this team's roadmap and technical foundations.

The Difference You Will Make:

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Passport team, you will be a key architect behind the next generation of our account platform, directly influencing how millions of guests and hosts experience Airbnb. You'll set technical direction for how account state, eligibility, and entitlements are computed, stored, and served at scale across every surface where a guest or host interacts with Airbnb.

Success in this role looks like a Passport platform that is reliable and extensible enough to support new programs and partner integrations without re-architecture — measured through service reliability (uptime, latency, correctness of entitlement calculations), the speed at which new offerings can launch, and adoption of your platform by other teams across Airbnb.

A Typical Day:

• Design and evolve the core services and data models that track account state, eligibility, and entitlements across millions of accounts
• Partner with product and design to translate new product concepts into scalable, extensible technical designs
• Collaborate with Payments and Wallet engineering to ensure credits, discounts, and host-funded programs settle correctly end-to-end
• Set technical direction and lead design reviews across a growing team, mentoring engineers and raising the bar on system design
• Drive cross-team architecture decisions with Identity & Privacy and Profile & Community teams to keep account state consistent with Airbnb's broader Passport model
• Identify and resolve reliability, scalability, and data-integrity risks before they affect guests or hosts

Your Expertise:

• 9+ years of experience designing and scaling complex, distributed backend systems, with a proven track record of technical leadership in high-growth environments
• A track record as a technical leader who has set architecture direction for a team or domain — not only delivered individual features
• Deep expertise in distributed systems fundamentals, including data consistency, caching, service decomposition, and API design at scale
• Experience building or operating systems involving financial transactions, entitlements, or other stateful account data is strongly preferred
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical decisions across multiple teams
• Comfort operating with ambiguity on a newly formed team, including helping define team scope, roadmap, and technical foundations
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across engineering, product, and design partners

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.

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.