Staff Backend Engineer - Ads Platform

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. The Community You Will Join: The Ads Platform team builds the AI-powered growth engine behind Airbnb's paid marketing across Google, Meta, and the broader advertising ecosystem. We build the platform and intelligent systems that power paid campaigns — from creative to optimization to audience — at scale across every channel, with a strong commitment to brand safety, quality, and human oversight. Our ambition is bold: to build increasingly autonomous, AI-driven marketing systems that grow Airbnb's business. We sit at the intersection of engineering, marketing, and AI. You'll partner closely with Marketing, Product, and Design, work alongside Airbnb's ML/AI and data platform teams, and integrate deeply with the core product to turn a rich understanding of the customer journey into differentiated, high-performing paid experiences. The Difference You Will Make: As a Staff Software Engineer on the Ads Platform team, you will lead the technical strategy and hands-on execution of Airbnb's next-generation, AI-powered Growth Engine for paid channels (Google, Meta, and beyond). You will architect systems that autonomously manage the full lifecycle of paid campaigns — creative generation and rotation, bidding and budget optimization, audience management, and feed intelligence — at scale. Success looks like measurable gains in marketing efficiency (ROAS/CAC) and campaign velocity as we advance the platform along its AI-assisted → agentic → autonomous maturity curve, with the quality, brand safety, and human-in-the-loop controls that let us operate autonomously with confidence. A Typical Day: Set technical direction for the agentic Growth Engine — making architecture decisions on the systems that generate creatives, optimize bids and budgets, and manage audiences across Google, Meta, and other paid channels. Write and review code hands-on, establishing engineering standards for quality, availability, and system health across the platform. Partner directly with Marketing, Product, and Design to translate growth objectives into platform capabilities, and to define the human-in-the-loop controls that keep autonomous campaigns safe and on-brand. Advance the AI-assisted → agentic → autonomous roadmap, identifying where to introduce automation next and de-risking it through experimentation and staged rollout. Mentor engineers and act as a force multiplier — leveling up the team through design reviews, technical guidance, and a collaborative, inclusive culture. Collaborate with ML/AI and data platform teams on the models and signals that feed campaign optimization, and integrate deeply with the Airbnb product to understand the customer journey. Your Expertise: 9+ years of experience in a hands-on software engineering role. Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience Technical leadership: hands on experience leading project teams, setting technical direction and strategy and mentoring engineers. Passionate about efficiency, availability, technical quality and system quality. Passion to level-up those around you through curiosity and fostering a collaborative and inclusive team environment. Proven experience in defining product/technical strategy and driving alignment with cross-functional leaders and stakeholders. Strong communication and collaboration skills with experience driving initiatives that span across teams, departments and leadership. Bonus - Hands-on experience with paid advertising platforms (Meta, Google, or similar) — you understand how the ecosystem works, not just the engineering surface. Your Location: 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, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list . 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 $212,000 — $265,000 USD