Associate Counsel, Innovation and Thought Leadership

Airbnb’s Legal Department is a global team that will require working with diverse international colleagues around the world. The successful candidate will be someone who is adaptable, collaborative and embodies Airbnb’s Core Values. Candidates will be required to approach complex legal issues with a balance for local and global perspectives, while being adaptable to cultural differences and nuances. A genuine and demonstrated interest in Airbnb and a commitment to ethics, integrity and fostering a workplace that emphasizes diversity and belonging is a must.

The Community You Will Join: 

Airbnb is looking for an Associate Counsel to join our Commercial & Technology Legal team, focusing on intellectual property transactions and open source. The ideal candidate is adaptable, collaborative, practical, and business-minded, with strong judgment and a clear commitment to Airbnb’s Core Values. In this role you’ll partner with teams across the company to support the infrastructure and products used by millions of people worldwide, helping Airbnb innovate and move quickly while safeguarding our IP, brand, and technology ecosystem. This is transactional and counseling work, not litigation or patent prosecution. We’re looking for someone with a genuine interest in Airbnb’s mission and a demonstrated commitment to ethics, integrity, diversity, and belonging.

Airbnb’s Legal team embodies the company’s innovative, forward-thinking spirit. At the boundary of the digital and physical world, Airbnb is building trustworthy AI and technology that mediate real-stakes interactions between real people. Where some see obstacles, we see the opportunity to find creative, practical solutions, right at the cutting edge. Our adventurous, fast-moving legal team brings together talented, collaborative, and self-motivated professionals across the globe who believe in Airbnb’s mission and in leading as a 21st-century company.

The Difference You Will Make:

This role sits where legal and technology meet: partnering with Airbnb’s technology and data science teams to guide how we build, share, and talk about our technology, while protecting the company’s IP. Your work will focus on three core areas: (i) strengthening open source governance and compliance for both what we use and what we release, including the evolving overlap between open source and AI; (ii) helping Airbnb’s technology teams share their work with the world while keeping risk and messaging in check; and (iii) negotiating university research and data agreements, including IP and publication rights. In the second core area, you’ll partner with authors from concept through publication, review external content, advise on what can go public versus stay internal, and weigh in on moonlighting and side-project requests. You’ll also advise on IP licensing and transactions more broadly, helping our teams innovate responsibly and tell Airbnb’s technology story with confidence.

A Typical Day: 

• Provide pragmatic guidance on open source licensing, compliance, and contribution practices (inbound use and outbound releases), including where open source meets AI, such as model and dataset licenses.
• Work with Engineering, Security, Infrastructure, Brand, and other teams to improve open source policies and workflows.
• Advise on open source governance topics such as:
• Usage & Contributing: internal use of third-party open source, “copyleft” risks, contributing to external projects, and CLA review.
• Owning & Releasing: when and how Airbnb code may be open sourced, quality and maintenance expectations, community and code-of-conduct considerations, and project sunsetting.
• Review external facing material (e.g., academic papers and articles, conference talks and decks, developer and community programs, technology-related blog and social posts) before publication, flagging IP, confidentiality and trade secrets, claims substantiation, third-party rights and permissions, and open source-adjacent messaging.
• Negotiate research and data agreements with public and private universities, covering sponsored research, publication rights, IP ownership, and commercial-use rights.
• Draft and review IP and licensing terms in intercompany and other commercial agreements.
• Advise senior leaders on what IP to release publicly and what to keep internal, review employee outside-work requests for IP and conflict concerns, and assess IP-contamination risk.
• Build and maintain the playbooks, templates, and training that help other lawyers and business partners handle common IP and open source questions on their own.
• Provide practical legal advice on a wide range of IP matters for data science, engineering, and business teams, including licensing issues tied to product development, tooling, and infrastructure.
• Partner with Marketing, Comms, and colleagues in Legal, and liaise with international colleagues, to keep guidance consistent across brand, marketing, and technology narratives and across regions.

Your Expertise:

• At least three years as an attorney at a law firm, in government, or in-house, including meaningful work in technology transactions and advising technical teams.
• Working knowledge of copyright, trademark, and patent fundamentals and how they apply in technology and product contexts.
• Experience drafting and negotiating IP and licensing provisions across a variety of agreements.
• Grounding in open source licensing and compliance.
• Familiarity with AI licensing, particularly where it intersects with open source.
• Strong analytical and risk-framing skills, with practical cost/benefit judgment in a fast-moving environment.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including translating complex legal issues for non-lawyers.
• Able to manage multiple matters, prioritize, and drive them to resolution with high ownership.
• Sound judgment on what to handle independently and when to escalate.
• Good sense of humor, disdain for drama, and desire to get things done.
• Passion for travel and deep appreciation for the Airbnb community.
• Licensed attorney in good standing of the bar of at least one U.S. state or territory.

Additional Qualifications (Preferred)

• Direct experience advising engineering, data science, infrastructure, or developer platform teams.
• Familiarity with common open source licenses (e.g., MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL/LGPL, AGPL) and typical compliance workflows (e.g., dependency review, notices, attribution, policy-based approvals).
• Experience negotiating sponsored research agreements and contracting with universities, public or private.
• Exposure to marketing and advertising law in external messaging, such as FTC basics, endorsements and testimonials, substantiation, and comparative claims.
• Deeper experience with AI/ML IP issues, such as training-data rights, model and dataset licensing, and output ownership.
• Enough technical fluency to sit with engineers, whether from a technical degree, coding experience, or hands-on work with ML or developer tools.
• Experience using/building legal self-service tools and agents.

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.