Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Job description

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.

Community you will join

At Airbnb, we’re reimagining how support is delivered at a global scale. The Community Support Engineering (CSE) team is leading a multi-year transformation—building intelligent, AI-augmented systems that provide timely, personalized, and always-on support experiences for our global community.

The CS Foundations Engineering (CSFE) team powers this mission by delivering robust platforms, reusable systems, and developer-facing infrastructure. Our tools help agents deliver exceptional service, enable faster product iteration, and support Airbnb’s mission to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere—with help that’s just a moment away.

The Difference You Will Make:

• As a machine learning engineer or scientist, your expertise will be pivotal in developing AI-powered solutions to shape the future of the Airbnb customer experience with cutting-edge AI techniques. You will drive and guide the rest of the engineers to brainstorm, design and develop AI products and features from inception to production.
• We’re seeking a Senior Staff Engineer who thrives at the intersection of technical depth, architectural thinking, and mentorship.
• You’ll collaborate with cross-functional leaders, build resilient systems that operate globally at scale, and help evolve the foundational building blocks behind AI-powered customer support.

While this role won’t own every project below, the below showcase the breadth and depth of work across our group, and where your leadership may be needed:

• Building a unified, platform-native case management system (AirCase), abstracted via Viaduct APIs and replacing legacy CRM systems.
• Designing scalable AI workflow orchestration to power agent co-pilot tools and intelligent response automation.
• Modernizing our Delivery Management Console (DMC) to include AI powered real-time performance insights, outlier detection, and agent coaching tools.
• Establishing shared data foundations to enable AI/ML solutions, feedback loops, and personalization across the support journey.
• Delivering next generating matching capabilities ( Routing) so incoming customer contacts are matched to the best agents using AI and Intelligence to deliver personalized and differentiated support experiences

A Typical Day:

• Work with large scale structured and unstructured data; explore, experiment, build and continuously improve Machine Learning models and pipelines for Airbnb product, business and operational use cases.
• Work collaboratively with cross-functional partners including product managers, operations and data scientists, to identify opportunities for business impact; understand, refine, and prioritize requirements for machine learning, and drive engineering decisions.
• Hands-on develop, productionize, and operate Machine Learning models and pipelines at scale, including both batch and real-time use cases.
• Leverage third-party and in-house Machine Learning tools & infrastructure to develop reusable, highly differentiating and high-performing Machine Learning systems, enable fast model development, low-latency serving and ease of model quality upkeep.
• Collaborate actively with engineers to apply ML / AI in their solutions to help validate ideas and guide to the right outcomes.
• Partner with other ML Engineers in foundations engineering to mentor and develop initiative to make ML application a core discipline for non ML engineers.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Educational Background: PhD in Computer Science,  Mathematics, Statistics, or related technical field.
• Industry Experience: 10+ years of experience in building, testing and shipping AI models and products from inception to production; including 2+ years of experience with GenAI.
• Leadership Experience: 10+ years experience leading and guiding machine learning and AI projects that deliver sizable impact as a senior IC.
• Technical Proficiency: Deep knowledge and hands-on experience with Machine Learning best practices (eg. training/serving skew minimization, feature engineering, feature/model selection), algorithms (eg. neural networks/deep learning, optimization) and domains (eg. NLP, computer vision, personalization, search and recommendation, marketplace optimization, anomaly detection)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Agentic and Automation: Experience with AI technologies in automating processes and developing agentic solutions and frameworks.
• Agile Practice for AI Production: Experience with the entire AI product development lifecycle from incubation to production at scale, following agile practices in the Applied AI/ML domain.

Infrastructure Acumen: Experience building robust testing frameworks for agent behavior validation and continuous improvement, and driving architectural requirements on ML infrastructures

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 Payments, Inc. (a subsidiary of Airbnb, Inc.) is a registered entity. Approved remote states include: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is excluded. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: [email protected]. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process.

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.

How We’ll Take Care of You:

Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Pay Range

$244,000—$305,000 USD