Staff Backend Engineer (Ads Platform)

Role overview

Join Airbnb’s Ads Platform team as a Staff Backend Engineer to lead the technical strategy and hands-on execution of Airbnb’s AI-powered Growth Engine for paid marketing channels.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical strategy and execution for the next-generation, AI-powered growth system for paid channels.
• Architect systems that manage the full lifecycle of paid campaigns at scale, including:
  • Creative generation and rotation
  • Bidding and budget optimization
  • Audience management
  • Feed intelligence
• Set technical direction for an agentic Growth Engine, making architecture decisions for systems that:
  • Generate creatives
  • Optimize bids and budgets
  • Manage audiences across Google, Meta, and other paid channels
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams and mentor engineers to raise technical quality and improve engineering culture.

Requirements

• 9+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Proven ability to define product/technical strategy and drive alignment with cross-functional leaders and stakeholders.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills; can lead initiatives across teams and departments.
• Passion for efficiency, availability, technical quality, and system quality.
• Technical leadership experience: leading project teams, setting technical direction/strategy, and mentoring.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in CS (or equivalent experience).

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience with paid advertising platforms (Meta, Google, or similar), with understanding of the ecosystem beyond the engineering surface.