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 Service Mesh team sits within Network Platform and is accountable for the infrastructure that makes all service-to-service communication secure, reliable, and observable. You’ll work on a high-impact team that owns the designing, building and operating the critical systems that connect all Airbnb bank-end services, covering service discovery, load balancing, access control, traffic failover, and routing for thousands of applications.
Our team also cares deeply about culture. A happy, healthy team is a primary focus for us. We get stuff done - but are also supportive, honest, and we aim to have fun.
The Difference You Will Make:
As a member of the service mesh team, you will be working with talented engineers on cutting edge technologies of cloud native network stack. You will contribute to the key infrastructure components that connect all Airbnb users and services across the globe. You will have the chance to define and influence large infrastructure initiatives such as global traffic load balancing and disaster recovery, next-gen service mesh, cross-region gateways and edge security etc.
Airbnb is a member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) end-user community, and we work closely with the open source community (e.g. k8s, istio) and peer companies to tackle cloud native engineering challenges at scale. You will also have the chance to make an impact on the industry and open source communities.
A Typical Day:
- Define and deliver the roadmap for mesh capabilities (routing, security, policy, resilience, multi-region failover).
- Set and track SLOs/SLAs for availability and performance; drive data-informed improvements.
- Build and mentor a strong engineering team; establish engineering excellence, code health, and operational rigor.
- Align with Security, Edge/Traffic, Compute, and Developer Platform on cross-cutting initiatives and standards.
- Mature incident management, post-incident learning, change management, and safe rollout practices.
- Plan capacity and investments to meet growth while optimizing efficiency and cost.
Your Expertise:
- 5+ years of relevant software development industry experience in a fast paced, high growth tech environment.
- Experience running large scale networking systems and software (e.g. Edge proxies, DNS, CDN, network gateways), experience working with istio, Envoy is a plus.
- You are a full-cycle developer: strong ownership and experience building and operating high-scale, distributed systems across the full software life cycle.
- You have excellent communication skills and the ability to work well within a team and with teams across the engineering teams.
- You are a strong problem solver and have led a team that is on-call for production infrastructure before.
- You are passionate about efficiency, availability, technical quality and system quality.
Your Location:
Remote- USA
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.
Reasonable Accommodations: We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.
A Note on Recruiting Scams: Scammers sometimes pose as Airbnb recruiters to get money or personal information from candidates. A few things that will always be true for Airbnb’s hiring process: our open roles are posted on Airbnb’s Career’s Page at careers.airbnb.com, and our recruiters correspond only from @airbnb.com or @ext.airbnb.com email addresses. Our recruiters will never ask for your Social Security number, bank account details, passport, or payment app information while you are interviewing. We’ll also never ask you to pay a fee, send money, deposit or cash a check, or purchase work-related equipment (such as a company laptop) during the interview process. We encourage candidates to remain vigilant of these recruiting scams and not share sensitive information if you do not believe an individual is actually affiliated with Airbnb.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of relevant software development industry experience in a fast-paced, high-growth technology environment
- Experience running large-scale networking systems and software, such as edge proxies, DNS, CDN, or network gateways
- Full-cycle development experience building and operating high-scale distributed systems across the software lifecycle
- Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate across engineering teams
- Strong problem-solving skills
- Experience leading a team responsible for production infrastructure on-call
- Experience with Istio or Envoy
- Passion for efficiency, availability, technical quality, and system quality
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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