Data Scientist, Operations Research/Customer Support (Inference)

Details

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.

Responsibilities

Airbnb is a mission-driven company dedicated to helping create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. Customer Support (CS) aims to build the world’s most loyal travel community through exceptional service. Personalizing our CS offerings will allow us to meet our customers when and how they need us most.

As a Data Scientist working on Inference in CS, you will collaborate with engineers, product managers, designers, and operation agents to build scalable and robust systems to match services to specific customer needs, creating meaningful impact through scientific understanding and designing interventions for Airbnb CS’s critical challenges.

You will focus on:

• Creating causal models to identify segments of users with unique CS needs and develop algorithms to match them with appropriate CS paths.
• Determining allocation strategy of Make Goods budget to maximize business impact.
• Estimating the long-term impact of CS experience changes for targeted user groups.
• Providing strategic insights on tradeoffs between CS quality and cost.
• Optimizing CS routing engines with advanced algorithms and developing simulations.
• Building understanding of agents’ abilities to improve CS quality.
• Measuring CS personalization products through rigorous experimentation and driving data-informed launch decisions.

Typical day includes building segmentation models, collaborating cross-functionally to refine requirements and quantify impact, designing quasi-experiment frameworks, integrating causal modeling with ML models, presenting internally to stakeholders, and introducing ideas to improve operational efficiency.

Requirements

• 2+ years of relevant industry experience (e.g., ML scientist, tech lead, junior faculty) with a Master’s degree or PhD in relevant fields.
• Strong fluency in Python or R and SQL for advanced data analysis.
• Experience with causal inference and experimentation techniques, ideally in multi-sided platform settings.
• Proven ability to communicate clearly to diverse technical audiences.
• Intellectual curiosity combined with pragmatism and technical engagement, with publications or presentations being a plus.
• Product-oriented mindset with innovative thinking for user-centric solutions.

Benefits

This role’s actual base pay depends on various factors including experience and market demands. Eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Location

This position is US - Remote Eligible, requiring residence in states where Airbnb has a registered entity. Occasional work at Airbnb offices or offsites may be required.