Staff Software Engineer, Communication & Connectivity

Airbnb Airbnb · Consumer · United States · Software Engineering

Staff Software Engineer role focused on building and maintaining large-scale, distributed data systems (batch and real-time) that power machine learning models and unlock new product features for Airbnb's Communication & Connectivity organization. The role involves architecting ML infrastructure, optimizing for performance, and collaborating with various engineering teams, including those applying GenAI and LLMs.

What you'd actually do

  1. Shape the team’s long-term vision and roadmap in close collaboration with cross-functional partners across Airbnb
  2. Build strong relationships with partner engineering teams, including backend, client, data science, analytics, and ML, to drive aligned and impactful outcomes
  3. Design, develop, and maintain reliable, scalable data pipelines - both batch and real-time - that collect, process, and serve data from diverse sources across Airbnb
  4. Implement robust offline and online feature building processes to enable faster production of ML products
  5. Architect and build ML infra and optimize for performance, scalability and cost-effectiveness

Skills

Required

  • 9+ years of relevant industry experience with a Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in CS/EE, or equivalent experience, or 6+ years of experience with a PhD
  • Strong CS fundamentals, and knowledge of architecture and common design patterns
  • Experience of running data processing pipelines in production using distributed data processing frameworks like Apache Spark or Flink
  • Experience collaborating with client, backend, ml, analytics teams, product and business partners
  • Effectively work across team boundaries to establish overarching data architecture, data flow, and provide guidance to individual teams
  • Experience working on/with end-to-end Machine Learning products
  • Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal

What the JD emphasized

  • 9+ years of relevant industry experience with a Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in CS/EE, or equivalent experience, or 6+ years of experience with a PhD

Other signals

  • The data team utilizes industry-leading tools, builds scalable data systems and applies cutting-edge ML models to provide insights and empower all products in the Communication and Connectivity (CnC) organization.
  • CnC is applying GenAI and large language models (LLMs) to power products that enhance the Airbnb experience in various surfaces including highly used ones like Messaging.
  • Architect and build ML infra and optimize for performance, scalability and cost-effectiveness