Staff Software Engineer, Performance

Details

Airbnb's Infrastructure Performance team optimizes performance across the fleet and throughout the backend stack — including Kubernetes services, observability infrastructure, data pipelines, and ML infrastructure. The team evaluates hardware and JVM performance, builds performance observability, and partners with cross-functional teams to reduce latency and operating cost. You will work closely with experienced engineers and report to the Senior Engineering Manager, Infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with cost and performance cross-functional partners and engineers across Airbnb to optimize infrastructure performance and operating cost.
• Profile, analyze, and tune performance for large services.
• Build distributed performance tooling to collect performance data and develop automation to surface performance bottlenecks.
• Lead continuous load testing in production to identify bottlenecks and vulnerabilities for airbnb.com.
• Troubleshoot and work on production performance issues to minimize customer-facing latency.
• Modernize Airbnb’s software stack across layers.
• Build infrastructure to deploy and validate the latest hardware in AWS Kubernetes clusters to minimize fleet footprint.

Requirements

• 10+ years of relevant performance optimization experience in a fast-paced, high-growth tech environment.
• Deep software tuning and optimization experience (Java preferred; C++ acceptable).
• Working knowledge of processor vectorization activation for COTS applications.
• Expertise using metrics and observability to uncover and diagnose performance issues.
• Familiarity with system hardware as it pertains to performance and with OS features.
• Familiarity with a public cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and IaaS offerings (e.g., EC2).
• Familiarity with container and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Strong performance debugging and profiling skills; experience with load testing or benchmarking (in production or via benchmarking tools).
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate across engineering teams.
• Passion for efficiency and performance.

Location

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed with your manager. Candidates must live in a U.S. state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity (some states may be excluded).

Compensation & Benefits

• Base pay range: $204,000—$255,000 USD (base pay depends on factors such as experience, skills, and market demand). This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.
• Airbnb provides inclusive hiring and accommodation processes for candidates with disabilities.

Team & Impact

• The team is responsible for performance observability across CPU, memory, locks, and other runtime resources and making this data available to backend teams.
• The role requires deep technical engagement with cross-functional partners and evaluation of hardware and JVM configurations to optimize performance and footprint.