Staff Software Engineer, Passport & Commerce

Role Description

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Passport team, you will be a key architect behind the next generation of our account platform, directly influencing how millions of guests and hosts experience Airbnb.

• Design and evolve the core services and data models that track account state, eligibility, and entitlements across millions of accounts.
• Partner with product and design to translate new product concepts into scalable, extensible technical designs.
• Collaborate with Payments and Wallet engineering to ensure credits, discounts, and host-funded programs settle correctly end-to-end.
• Set technical direction and lead design reviews across a growing team, mentoring engineers and raising the bar on system design.
• Drive cross-team architecture decisions with Identity & Privacy and Profile & Community teams to keep account state consistent with Airbnb's broader Passport model.
• Identify and resolve reliability, scalability, and data-integrity risks before they affect guests or hosts.

Qualifications

• 9+ years of experience designing and scaling complex, distributed backend systems, with a proven track record of technical leadership in high-growth environments.
• A track record as a technical leader who has set architecture direction for a team or domain — not only delivered individual features.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems fundamentals, including data consistency, caching, service decomposition, and API design at scale.
• Experience building or operating systems involving financial transactions, entitlements, or other stateful account data is strongly preferred.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical decisions across multiple teams.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity on a newly formed team, including helping define team scope, roadmap, and technical foundations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across engineering, product, and design partners.

Requirements

• 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.
• If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Benefits

• Base pay range: $212,000 — $265,000 USD.
• This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Company 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.

The Community You Will Join:

• Passport & Commerce builds the trusted account and commerce foundation that lets anyone, anywhere, become part of the Airbnb community.
• Our mission is to move Airbnb beyond the transaction — building a world where accounts create trust, value sticks, and what our community earns travels with them, and their businesses, wherever they go.