Staff Software Engineer (Data Engineering)

Role overview

Join Airbnb as a Staff Software Engineer (Data Engineering) to help ensure trustworthy data across the business. You’ll collaborate with cross-functional teams to build and evolve data systems that power product releases, insights, and partner decision-making.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to influence and deliver company-wide product releases using innovative data systems.
• Architect and productionize batch and real-time data systems for multiple products and business needs, ensuring quality, performance, and stability.
• Mentor and coach team members; provide technical guidance and help shape data engineering strategies and roadmaps.

Requirements

• Strong knowledge of Java, Scala, or Python plus expertise in data processing and SQL query authoring.
• 9+ years relevant industry experience (Bachelor’s/Master’s in CS/EE or equivalent) or 6+ years with a PhD.
• Proven technical leadership: mentor teams, establish best practices, and contribute to data engineering strategy.
• Strong collaboration skills with product managers, engineers, data scientists, and business partners.
• Expertise in data modeling and data warehousing.
• Experience with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and columnar databases (e.g., Redshift, BigQuery).
• Proven ability to design, productionize, and optimize batch and real-time pipelines.
• Distributed data platform experience at petabyte scale (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Flink, HBase).
• Advanced analytical and problem-solving skills focused on data quality, governance, and reliability.
• Excellent written and verbal communication to influence stakeholders and explain complex concepts.

Nice to have

• Experience integrating with machine learning engineers to incorporate ML models into data systems and products.