Staff Software Engineer, Service Tools

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.

AI @ 6 API @ 4 Algorithms @ 4 Data Analysis @ 7 Data Pipelines @ 4 Data Science @ 4 Go @ 6 JVM @ 4 Java @ 6 Kotlin @ 6 Observability Ruby @ 6

Details

Airbnb's Service Tools team enables backend developers to develop, test, and maintain their code quickly and reliably. The team owns the standard development lifecycle for service owners, including AI-assisted development, build systems, integration testing, code review, and service deployment.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will set technical direction for a platform-spanning area of the developer lifecycle. You will frame problems, build measurements to demonstrate impact, drive roadmaps with partner teams, and develop the engineers working with you. Key areas include agentic development, intelligent build infrastructure, testing, codebase modernization, and developer observability.

Responsibilities

Own multi-quarter, platform-spanning workstreams such as agentic developer workflows, intelligent build infrastructure, test excellence, codebase modernization, or developer observability.
Advance Airbnb's AI-assisted development platform through agent skills, tool integrations, evaluation harnesses, and telemetry measuring human intervention.
Scale build and merge infrastructure for a large JVM monorepo, including Bazel, remote build execution and caching, merge-queue throughput, test sharding and selection, and capacity modeling.
Improve testing through coverage and mutation signals, AI-authored tests, faster local and pre-merge feedback, and testing contracts.
Lead large-scale codebase modernization, including JDK and Kotlin toolchain upgrades, test-framework migrations, and build-module migrations through automated refactoring.
Use developer and production telemetry to identify productivity, cost, and confidence problems and guide prioritization.
Contribute to code and architecture reviews, design documents, incident reviews, and postmortems.
Shape technical strategy supporting Developer Experience, Developer Velocity, Debuggability, Resilience, and Reliability while reducing cost.
Mentor and develop engineers in partnership with the engineering manager.
Partner with engineering leaders across Airbnb to drive adoption of new capabilities.
Represent the work through technical blog posts, conference talks, open source, and vendor partnerships when appropriate.

Requirements

9+ years of industry experience with a bachelor's or master's degree, or 6+ years with a PhD.
Bachelor's and/or master's degree, preferably in computer science, or equivalent experience.
Proficiency in one or more backend server languages, such as Java, Kotlin, Ruby, Go, or C++.
Experience owning platform or infrastructure areas end to end, setting technical agendas, aligning partner teams, and delivering over multiple quarters.
Deep hands-on experience with build systems and large monorepos; Bazel and remote build execution experience are a strong plus.
Extensive JVM experience with Java and/or Kotlin, including the performance, memory, and startup behavior of large builds and test suites.
Fluency with AI-assisted development technologies, including coding agents, skills, context engineering, tool integrations, and rigorous agent-quality evaluation.
Experience with high-scale distributed product and service architecture, including well-designed APIs, data pipelines, and efficient algorithms.
Strong measurement and data analysis skills, with the ability to size problems and validate solutions.
Ability to work with large, open-ended, ambiguous scopes and determine what should be built.
Demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders and drive alignment across teams and functions.
Experience or interest in collaborating with design, product, and data science partners.
Commitment to operational excellence, technical debt management, mentorship, clear writing, and engineering productivity.

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.