Staff Backend Engineer - Ads Platform

Stack

Responsibilities

• ▹Set technical direction for the agentic Growth Engine — architecture decisions for creative generation and rotation, bidding and budget optimization, and audience management
• ▹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 define human-in-the-loop controls that keep autonomous campaigns safe
• ▹Advance the AI-assisted → agentic → autonomous roadmap through experimentation and staged rollout
• ▹Mentor engineers and act as a force multiplier through design reviews and technical guidance
• ▹Collaborate with ML/AI and data platform teams on the models and signals feeding campaign optimization

Requirements

• ▹9+ years of hands-on software engineering experience
• ▹Technical leadership: experience leading project teams, setting technical direction and strategy, and mentoring engineers
• ▹Passion for efficiency, availability, technical quality and system quality
• ▹Proven experience defining product/technical strategy and driving alignment with cross-functional leaders and stakeholders
• ▹Strong communication and collaboration skills, driving initiatives across teams, departments and leadership

Nice to have

• ▹Bachelor's and/or Master's degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience
• ▹Hands-on experience with paid advertising platforms (Meta, Google, or similar)

Soft skills

What we offer

• ▹Pay range: $212,000 - $265,000 USD
• ▹Bonus eligibility
• ▹Equity
• ▹Employee Travel Credits
• ▹US remote-eligible (in states where Airbnb has a registered entity)

About the company

Airbnb was born in 2007 and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe, making it possible for guests and hosts to connect in an authentic way.