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:
Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. Airbnb Payments team supports this mission by economically empowering Airbnb businesses and our global community of guests and hosts.
Payments is a core part of Airbnb’s business and guest/Host experience, operating across global markets, currencies, payment methods, regulatory environments, and partner integrations. We build and operate Airbnb’s in-house payments platform to support global scale, reliability, compliance, and product flexibility. The team works closely with Product, Design, Data Science, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Operations, and external payment partners to deliver trusted payment experiences for our community.
The Difference You Will Make:
As an Engineering Manager on Payments, you will lead one or more engineering teams responsible for building and operating critical payments systems. You will set clear team priorities, create an environment where engineers and technical leads can do their best work, and partner cross-functionally to deliver high-quality outcomes for Airbnb's guests, Hosts, and business.
You will be expected to navigate complex and ambiguous problems, balance near-term execution with long-term platform health, and help define a roadmap that supports scale, reliability, regulatory needs, and product innovation. You will partner closely with technical leads to make sound engineering decisions, reduce systemic technical debt, and uphold operational excellence for systems that move money at global scale.
This role requires strong people leadership, technical judgment, stakeholder management, and the ability to create clarity across complex business and technical tradeoffs.
A Typical Day:
As an Engineering Manager on the Payments, you will:
- Collaborate with other senior leaders to define and drive long-term technical strategy and architecture that enables the company’s future vision.
- Establish a technical vision and lead efforts to architect, build, and launch reliable, performant, and scalable solutions.
- Collaborate with and influence cross-functional partners to design and deliver high-quality products.
- Lead team technical initiatives, and work cross-functionally to identify opportunities for business impact, refine, and prioritize requirements for engineering systems.
- Lead conversations that align technical efforts with business outcomes and product priorities.
- Nurture a culture of technical quality and engineering excellence from design, through code review, to production.
- Enable and empower ICs to grow their impact beyond individual contributions, creating opportunities for them to lead technical initiatives that span across platforms and organizations.
- Retain, grow and hire a team of high-performing engineers. Build a strong and diverse team capable of turning ambitious product visions into a polished reality.
Your Expertise :
[M1 - Engineering Manager]
- 3-5+ years of hands-on experience managing an engineering team and 9+ years of relevant software development industry experience in a fast paced tech environment.
- Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience.
- Strong expertise in building large-scale backend systems and experience in user facing features.
- Strong product and design instinct, previous proven experience building delightfully designed experiences.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills. Proven experience working with many engineering teams and cross functional partners.
- Flexible in leadership style, can adapt to a variety of ways of working depending on the situation.
- Experience leading and shipping large initiatives with high business impact.
- Creating a strong culture of operational excellence with focus on raising the bar for quality, reliability and availability.
- Good judgment in making tradeoffs to balance short-term business needs with long-term technical quality.
- Strong communication skill and ability to influence decisions from a wide variety of stakeholders.
- Experience fostering an inclusive and engaging team environment.
- Able to identify, retain, grow and acquire critical talent.
- Strong commitment to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within teams.
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.
Skills Required
- 3-5+ years managing an engineering team
- 9+ years relevant software development industry experience
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience
- Strong expertise building large-scale backend systems
- Experience with user-facing features and product-led engineering
- Proven experience leading and shipping large, high-business-impact initiatives
- Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Demonstrated ability to create operational excellence, reliability, and availability
- Strong judgment balancing short-term needs with long-term technical quality
- Experience hiring, retaining, and growing engineering talent
- Experience fostering an inclusive and engaging team environment and commitment to DEI
- Flexible leadership style and ability to influence diverse stakeholders
- Must live in a U.S. state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity
Airbnb Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Airbnb and has not been reviewed or approved by Airbnb.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay ranges and total compensation components are increasingly disclosed, and country-level pay practices avoid location-based cuts, which feedback suggests improves consistency and perceived fairness.
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Healthcare Strength — Comprehensive core health coverage for employees, mental health resources, and substantial dependent support are repeatedly highlighted as robust and a standout element of the package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Generous PTO, a winter shutdown, sabbaticals, and paid volunteer time are described as extensive, with parental leave and phased return options reinforcing time-off flexibility.
Airbnb Insights
What We Do
Airbnb is a community based on connection and belonging—a community that was born in 2008 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to 4 million hosts who have welcomed over 800 million guest arrivals to about 100,000 cities in almost every country and region across the globe. Hosts on Airbnb are everyday people who share their worlds to provide guests with the feeling of connection and being at home. At Airbnb, we believe that hosts, guests and the communities where we operate are all stakeholders we have a responsibility to serve, and that by serving them alongside our employees and investors, we will build an enduringly successful company.
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