Staff Software Engineer, Data Engineering

Airbnb Airbnb · Consumer · United States · Software Engineering

Staff Software Engineer, Data Engineering role at Airbnb, focusing on building and optimizing data pipelines, data quality, and data models to support business insights and AI initiatives. The role involves architecting batch and real-time systems, collaborating with data scientists and ML engineers, and ensuring data governance and compliance.

What you'd actually do

  1. Architect and productionize batch and real-time data systems to support various products and business needs.
  2. Ensure the quality, performance, and stability of data systems through robust quality systems and monitoring practices.
  3. Design and optimize data models for efficient storage and retrieval to meet critical product and business requirements.
  4. Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers, engineers, data scientists, and business partners, to align on data requirements and develop scalable systems.
  5. Tune, productionize, and optimize data systems and machine learning models to enhance their effectiveness and efficiency.

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
  • Extensive experience designing, building, and operating robust distributed data platforms (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Flink, HBase) and handling data at the petabyte scale.
  • Strong knowledge of Java, Scala, or Python, and expertise with data processing technologies and query authoring (SQL).
  • Proven ability to design, productionize, and optimize batch and real-time data pipelines and systems, ensuring their quality, performance, and stability.
  • Excellent ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers, engineers, data scientists, and business partners, to align on requirements and drive data-driven decision-making.
  • Advanced analytical and problem-solving skills with a focus on data quality, governance, and system reliability.
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, capable of influencing stakeholders and conveying complex technical concepts effectively.
  • Expertise in data modeling, warehousing, and working with relational (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and columnar databases (e.g., Redshift, BigQuery).

Nice to have

  • Experience working with machine learning engineers to integrate ML models into data systems and products
  • Ability to provide technical leadership and mentorship, guiding teams on best practices and contributing to the development of data engineering strategies.
  • Flexibility and innovative thinking to evaluate and incorporate new technologies and methodologies to improve data processes and solutions.

What the JD emphasized

  • High quality data is critical to our business decisions and the future of our AI initiatives.
  • Tune, productionize, and optimize data systems and machine learning models to enhance their effectiveness and efficiency.

Other signals

  • data pipelines
  • data quality
  • data modeling
  • ML models