Staff Software Engineer, Passport & Commerce (Backend) at Airbnb

Sharkey; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 212,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus eligibility

Equity

Employee travel credits

Remote-friendly

Job summary

Airbnb seeks a Staff Software Engineer for the Passport team to shape the next generation of the account platform. You will define how account state, eligibility, and entitlements are computed, stored, and served at scale across surfaces where guests or hosts interact with Airbnb.

As a technical leader, you will partner with Payments, Wallet, Identity & Privacy, Profile & Community to stand up the roadmap and foundations, drive reliability and extensibility, and mentor engineers across multiple

Qualifications

• 9+ years of experience designing and scaling complex, distributed backend systems.
• Proven track record of technical leadership in high-growth environments.
• Architectural direction experience across a team or domain.
• Expertise in distributed systems fundamentals (data consistency, caching, service decomposition, API design at scale).
• Experience with financial transactions, entitlements, or stateful account data preferred.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity on a newly formed team.
• Strong written and verbal communication across engineering, product, design.

Responsibilities

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

Skills

Distributed backend systems

Technical leadership

Architecture direction

API design at scale

Mentoring engineers

Cross-team collaboration

Written and verbal communication

Ambiguity management

Stateful account data

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:

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

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.

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