Staff Software Engineer, Passport & Commerce (Backend)

at Airbnb

📍 United States

USD 212,000-265,000 per year

SENIOR

✅ Remote

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

API @ 6 Communication @ 7 Distributed Systems @ 7 Leadership @ 6 Mentoring @ 6 Payments Technical Leadership @ 6

Details

Passport & Commerce builds the trusted account and commerce foundation that supports identity, account state, entitlements, bookings, and business transactions across Airbnb. The role focuses on designing and scaling the Passport account platform for millions of guests and hosts, including systems for account state, eligibility, and entitlements.

Responsibilities

Design and evolve core services and data models that track account state, eligibility, and entitlements across millions of accounts.
Partner with product and design teams to translate product concepts into scalable, extensible technical designs.
Collaborate with Payments and Wallet engineering to ensure credits, discounts, and host-funded programs settle correctly end to end.
Set technical direction and lead design reviews across a growing team.
Mentor engineers and raise the bar on system design.
Drive cross-team architecture decisions with Identity & Privacy and Profile & Community teams.
Identify and resolve reliability, scalability, and data-integrity risks.
Help define the newly formed team's scope, roadmap, and technical foundations.

Requirements

9+ years of experience designing and scaling complex, distributed backend systems.
Proven track record of technical leadership in high-growth environments.
Experience setting architecture direction for a team or domain.
Deep expertise in distributed systems fundamentals, including data consistency, caching, service decomposition, and API design at scale.
Experience building or operating systems involving financial transactions, entitlements, or stateful account data is strongly preferred.
Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical decisions across multiple teams.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across engineering, product, and design partners.
Comfort operating with ambiguity on a newly formed team.

Location

This position is US remote eligible. 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.