Senior Software Engineer, Data Authoring Platform

Airbnb Airbnb · Consumer · United States · Software Engineering

This role focuses on building and extending infrastructure for Airbnb's Data Authoring Platform, which aims to turn raw data into decision-grade insights. The platform provides a paved path for internal users to model, transform, and serve data and metrics, powering experimentation and executive dashboards. The role involves working on a semantic layer and metrics platform, ensuring data consistency, and building tooling for reliability, governance, and cost-efficiency. The goal is to make it easier for thousands of internal users to build and consume high-quality data models and pipelines to enable decision-making across product, finance, and operations.

What you'd actually do

  1. Build and extend the capabilities of our query rewriting service.
  2. Research the latest semantic layer techniques and database engine features to determine what Minerva’s priorities should be.
  3. Partner with teams across the company to improve the impact of data, especially by making it easier to query data.
  4. Participate in all phases of software development from architecture/design through implementation, testing, and on-call.

Skills

Required

  • 5+ years in a hands-on software engineering role, shipping high quality code to production.
  • Experience with at least one modern, general programming language.
  • Experience at the boundary between data engineering and software engineering.
  • Experience with a data platform with multiple abstraction or semantic layers.
  • A deep understanding of OOP and API design patterns.
  • Experience working closely with other engineering teams across complex interfaces.
  • Strong communication skills and a track record of leading projects across teams.

Nice to have

  • Proficiency authoring DSLs or APIs that abstract data transformations (e.g., dbt, Airflow Providers, custom compilers)
  • Experience with data warehouse technologies

What the JD emphasized

  • fast, reliable, and at scale
  • model, transform, and serve trustworthy data and metrics
  • semantic layer & metrics platform
  • one definition of truth
  • building infrastructure to solve cutting edge semantic layer and data transformation problems
  • democratized access to data
  • build and consume high quality data models, data pipelines, and business critical metrics
  • explore and develop new product experiences from ideation to implementation at scale
  • experiment with product concepts and make the correct choice about what is right for our customers
  • data is the voice of our customers at scale
  • improve the Airbnb product for every guest and host
  • query rewriting service
  • semantic layer techniques
  • database engine features
  • easier to query data
  • architecture/design through implementation, testing, and on-call
  • shipping high quality code to production
  • boundary between data engineering and software engineering
  • data platform with multiple abstraction or semantic layers
  • OOP and API design patterns
  • working closely with other engineering teams across complex interfaces
  • communication skills and a track record of leading projects across teams
  • authoring DSLs or APIs that abstract data transformations
  • data warehouse technologies