Airbnb is hiring a Senior Staff Data Engineer to lead the technical strategy and execution of its Foundation Data team. This team builds foundational datasets and self-service data experiences that power decisions and products across the company. The role is ideal for a seasoned technical leader passionate about data architecture, mentorship, and engineering excellence. You will stay hands-on while setting direction for cloud cost, traffic, bot data, infrastructure intelligence, and product data. The position is US – Remote Eligible, with occasional office or offsite work as agreed. You must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Compensation is $248,000–$310,000 USD, plus potential equity, bonus, and benefits.
Overview
Compensation not specified
remote
full-time
7+ years of experience (staff level)
Technologies
- AirflowSQLSparkPythonScalaDBTAWSGCPSnowflakeBigQueryDatabricksPresto
Responsibilities
- Own the technical vision and strategy for the Foundation Data team.
- Design, build, and own foundational data pipelines and data models (e.g., cloud cost, traffic, bot data, infra intelligence, product data).
- Lead architecture and development of scalable, maintainable infrastructure for foundational data capabilities.
- Partner with data scientists and product teams to define data models for self-service analytics, model training, and product decisions.
- Drive data quality, accessibility, and monitoring for data pipelines.
- Lead technical design reviews, set engineering best practices, and define data standards.
- Mentor data engineers and guide the team on complex data engineering challenges.
- Collaborate cross-functionally to align data infrastructure with business goals.
- Resolve production incidents and participate in the on-call rotation.
Qualifications
- 12+ years of experience designing and building data pipelines and data models in large-scale, high-impact data systems.
- Expertise in data modeling, including dimensional modeling and normalization.
- Experience with Airflow and SQL, and Spark (Python and Scala). DBT is a plus.
- Expertise in optimizing query performance, cost, and data reliability.
- Deep experience managing large-scale data lakes and warehousing solutions.
- Experience leading technical strategy and execution for data engineering teams, including mentoring and coaching senior engineers.
- Strong communication skills and ability to work with cross-functional partners across engineering, product, data science, and finance.
- Experience designing data systems for self-service analytics, model training, and product decisions, particularly in cloud-native environments.
- Familiarity with cloud-based data technologies such as AWS, GCP, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, and Presto.
- Strong background in computer science or a related field, with focus on distributed systems, data engineering, and software development best practices.
Benefits
- Base salary range: $248,000–$310,000 USD.
- May be eligible for equity, bonus, and other benefits.