Engineering Manager, UI Tooling

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.

The Community You Will Join

The UI Foundation team is responsible for the design system, accessibility, motion, and the tooling that connects how Airbnb designs and builds products. Within UI Foundation, the UI Tooling team is the connective tissue between Airbnb's Design Language System and the day-to-day workflows of hundreds of designers and engineers across the company.

UI Tooling owns the platforms, integrations, and tooling that power how designers and engineers work — spanning design tooling, UI engineering workflow tooling, collaboration platforms, and increasingly, AI-powered workflows across all three. As AI enablement for designers and engineers accelerates, this team sits at the center of some of Airbnb's most strategic infrastructure investments.

The Difference You Will Make

As the Engineering Manager of UI Tooling, you will provide the dedicated leadership this team needs to execute with consistency, clarity, and long-term strategic direction. You'll manage and develop a team of engineers, own the multi-year roadmap across UI Tooling's core areas, and serve as a cross-functional partner to Design, Product, and AI teams driving the next generation of designer and engineer enablement at Airbnb.

You will own strategy and execution across five key areas:

• AI Usage of the Design System: Figma Code Connections and Integrations, UI Development Skills and Agents, Prototyping Skills and Agents, Design Skills and Agents
• Core UI Development Workflow & Tooling: Component development and documentation tooling, design-to-code platforms, migration tooling
• Core Design Workflow & Tooling: Internal design platforms, Figma enablement, design tooling and Figma plugins
• Collaboration Workflow & Tooling: Motion spec tooling and core motion frameworks, prototyping platform contributions and tools
• Education and Adoption: Enabling designers and engineers to be properly educated in the tools provided and ensuring adoption of those tools

Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership:

• Define multi-year technical roadmaps for UI Tooling with clear, measurable outcomes tied to UI Foundation goals
• Drive adoption of AI-powered design-to-code workflows across Design and Engineering, establishing Airbnb as a leader in this space
• Build cross-functional alignment with Figma, product teams, and AI/ML partners to advance designer and engineer enablement capabilities
• Represent UI Tooling in org-level planning and investment conversations, shaping prioritization and surfacing dependencies across UI Foundation

Day-to-Day Execution:

• Lead, develop, and grow a team of engineers working across design tooling, developer experience, and AI-powered workflows
• Partner with design and engineering leaders to identify workflow pain points and prioritize the highest-leverage tooling investments
• Guide technical decisions across the team — from platform architecture to AI integration patterns — bringing a senior engineering point of view to system design
• Manage staffing, prioritization, and execution consistency, driving clarity and unblocking work across long-horizon platform investments
• Mentor and develop engineers on the team, supporting career growth and raising the technical bar
• Foster an inclusive team culture grounded in psychological safety and high performance

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years in an engineering management role leading platform, tooling, or design systems teams
• Strong technical foundation in frontend or cross-platform development, with the depth to engage credibly on architecture decisions
• Track record of driving long-horizon platform investments from strategy through execution, with strong cross-organizational influence and stakeholder management
• Experience building or leading developer experience, design tooling, or design system infrastructure at scale
• Familiarity with Figma's ecosystem — plugins, Dev Mode, Code Connections, or similar design-to-code workflows
• Commitment to inclusive leadership and creating environments where engineers can do their best work
• Bonus: Experience working with AI-powered developer or designer tooling, or integrating LLM capabilities into product workflows

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. For details the posting links to Airbnb's careers page for the up-to-date list of excluded states.

Inclusion & Accessibility

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. They strive to provide a disability inclusive application and interview process and ask candidates who require reasonable accommodation to contact [email protected] with their full name, the role, and the accommodation necessary.

Compensation & How We'll Take Care of You

The actual base pay depends upon factors such as training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The role may be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Pay Range

$212,000—$265,000 USD

Offices: United States