Staff Software Engineer, Guest & Host in London

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: We are building the next generation of Airbnb experiences for both guests and hosts across Europe and EMEA, with a singular focus: making Airbnb successful in the region's 40+ markets. While our initial focus is on the booking surfaces – payments, search, pricing, and inventory discovery – our charter spans the entire app, and we're empowered to make changes anywhere they're needed to win in the region. As part of the Guest and Host organisation, and in collaboration with engineering teams based in San Francisco and globally, you will focus on enabling localised, trustworthy, and differentiated experiences that reflect how Europeans actually travel and host. You'll be able to work on exciting, innovative, and technically challenging work, supporting a major company strategy.

Software Engineer Role: As a Staff Engineer, you will lead the development and refinement of major subsystems. Responsibilities include creating and refining product features, ensuring seamless day‑to‑day operations, identifying patterns for streamlined development, and presenting technical and product insights to stakeholders. At the staff full‑stack level, you’ll set a technical vision, delivering flexible, efficient, and scalable solutions aligning with business needs.

Your Impact:

• Designing Future States: Shape our technical systems’ future state by aligning high‑level product goals with a deep understanding of existing systems, guiding strategic technical and product decisions for both short and long terms.
• Leadership in Action: Lead engineers across teams in crafting technical solutions, engaging in the development of product and UX requirements, and fostering a culture of technical excellence.
• Collaboration Champion: Collaborate with various teams – product, engineering, data science, data engineering, and UX – to contribute to the development of efficient solutions and uphold technical quality.

Your Expertise:

• Proven Experience: A track record of 9+ years in the software development industry within a fast‑paced tech environment.
• Backend Proficiency: Demonstrated expertise in backend systems within large‑scale service‑oriented architectures.
• Strategic Decision‑Making: Proven ability to exercise sound judgment in making trade‑offs to balance short‑term business needs with long‑term technical quality.
• End‑to‑End Understanding: Experience with an end‑to‑end mentality, transcending team boundaries to find globally optimal solutions.
• Effective Communication: Excellent communication skills with a history of collaborating effectively within and across engineering teams.
• Quality Advocacy: Passionate about efficiency, availability, system quality, and user experience, demonstrated through prior projects.
• Architectural Excellence: Experience in architectural patterns of high‑scale distributed products/services, such as well‑designed APIs, data pipelines, and efficient algorithms.
• Collaborative Background: A track record of successfully working collaboratively in cross‑functional teams with design, product, and data science partners.

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.

How We’ll Take Care of You: 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 shown below is annualized, is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits. United Kingdom Annual Pay Range £120,000—£150,000 GBP.