Staff Software Engineer, GenAI Systems

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

The Community You Will Join

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are at the heart of the Airbnb product. The Core Machine Learning team in the Community Support Platform (CSP) organization is one of the core teams responsible for driving CSxAI (Customer Support x Artificial Intelligence) initiatives by adopting the Generative AI to enable an intelligent, scalable and exceptional service experience. Within the Core Machine Learning team, the AI Assistant Product Evaluation team is responsible for building reliable, high-quality, and efficient evaluation solutions, along with a cohesive suite of observability and testability tools, to accelerate AI model development, enhance the AI Assistant product experience, and empower broader AI initiatives across Airbnb Community Support Platform.

The Difference You Will Make

As a Staff Software engineer (GenAI) on the AI Assistant Product Evaluation team, your expertise will be pivotal in developing and optimizing scalable engineering evaluation framework and systems for Airbnb’s Generative AI products. You will work closely with a team of cross-platform engineers with collective expertise in machine learning, Conversational AI, and backend development to define and shape the future of the Airbnb Community Support experience. You will also partner with product managers, data scientists, and operation teams to leverage engineering innovations to simplify the business requirements into scalable solutions.

A Typical Day

• Work closely with Core Modeling engineers to understand pain points in the LLM development process, and develop LLM-as-a-judge solutions and models to address metric-related challenges in a scalable and efficient way.
• Design, productionize, and optimize end-to-end data systems to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the AI evaluation automation framework.
• Collaborate with machine learning infrastructure engineering teams to evolve how we build and test evaluation framework for Airbnb Conversational AI products.
• Lead all phases of software development including architecture design, implementation and testing.
• Work collaboratively with cross-functional partners including product managers, operations and data scientists, identify opportunities for business impact, understand and prioritize requirements for machine learning systems and data pipelines, drive engineering decisions and quantify impact.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence by supporting teammates in writing high-quality code, ensuring operational reliability, and sharing knowledge across the team.

Your Expertise

• 9+ years of industry experience in applied machine learning, with a track record of technical leadership and delivering complex, high-impact AI/ML systems.
• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field.
• Deep expertise in Large Language Models (LLMs), including experience with LLM model evaluation methodologies, and agent-based applications.
• Solid programming skills in Python and at least one other language (e.g., Java, Go, or Scala), with a strong foundation in software design, testing, and code quality.
• Strong AI/ML system design skills with a track record of building scalable, extensible AI systems
• Familiarity with ML infrastructure and operations, including model deployment, serving, monitoring, and experimentation.
• Proven ability to work in cross-functional teams, collaborating with modeling engineers, product managers, data scientists, and operations to deliver end-to-end solutions.
• Excellent communication, mentorship, and technical leadership skills; able to drive alignment, set direction, and influence engineering culture across teams.

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process.

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.

How We'll Take Care Of You

Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Pay Range

$204,000—$255,000 USD