Senior Programs & Business Operations Lead

Details

The Experiences team is scaling a curated, high-quality supply of unique activities hosted by local creators, iconic businesses, and operators worldwide. This role owns the demand-side merchandising strategy for discoverability: what Airbnb surfaces, to whom, and when. It is a business operations and product operations hybrid focused on discoverability and merchandising.

Responsibilities

Own Merchandising and Discoverability Strategy

• Define the demand-side merchandising strategy on top of ranking, including placement, sequencing, and the logic for what surfaces to which guests.
• Advocate for dynamic, context-aware ranking based on day of week, availability, trends, market, and traveler type.
• Represent the demand perspective in the ranking roadmap.
• Prioritize experiments that improve discoverability and translate results into decisions.

Partner with Product, Engineering, and Supply

• Serve as the senior demand counterpart to Product and Engineering on matching, personalization, and ranking.
• Clarify where merchandising is a demand mandate versus a supply or product mandate, and drive alignment on ownership.
• Maintain active product-to-operations collaboration, including during periods of reduced Product coverage.
• Partner with the SEM/SEO/Display lead to ensure channel strategies are coherent and non-duplicative.

Build the Reporting Layer

• Establish dashboards and measurement for discoverability, spotlights, and placement performance.
• Close analytics and tooling gaps that limit the team’s ability to learn and iterate quickly.
• Provide a data-driven perspective on where merchandising investment delivers value.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in business operations, product operations, or strategy, ideally at a marketplace or consumer platform.
• Strong analytical foundation, with the ability to work with data, build measurement systems, and turn insights into operating decisions.
• Proven experience partnering with Product and Engineering on ranking, search, personalization, or merchandising.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive alignment across senior stakeholders with competing mandates.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to influence a technical roadmap at a senior level without directly owning it.

Nice to Have

• Background in search, ranking, recommendations, or merchandising systems.
• SQL or equivalent hands-on analytics capability.

Location

This position is eligible for remote work in the United States. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed with the manager. Employees must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. If the position is employed by another Airbnb entity, the recruiter will provide information about eligible states.

Inclusion and Belonging

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible and believes diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply. Airbnb also strives to provide a disability-inclusive application and interview process and offers reasonable accommodation support.

Compensation and Benefits

The base pay range is $204,000–$249,000 USD. Actual base pay depends on factors including training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, and market demands. The role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.