Staff Backend Engineer

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the agentic Growth Engine — making architecture decisions on the systems that generate creatives, optimize bids and budgets, and manage audiences across Google, Meta, and other paid channels.
• Write and review code hands-on, establishing engineering standards for quality, availability, and system health across the platform.
• Partner directly with Marketing, Product, and Design to translate growth objectives into platform capabilities, and to define the human-in-the-loop controls that keep autonomous campaigns safe and on-brand.
• Advance the AI-assisted → agentic → autonomous roadmap, identifying where to introduce automation next and de-risking it through experimentation and staged rollout.
• Mentor engineers and act as a force multiplier — leveling up the team through design reviews, technical guidance, and a collaborative, inclusive culture.
• Collaborate with ML/AI and data platform teams on the models and signals that feed campaign optimization, and integrate deeply with the Airbnb product to understand the customer journey.

Requirements

• 9+ years of experience in a hands-on software engineering role.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience.
• Technical leadership: hands on experience leading project teams, setting technical direction and strategy and mentoring engineers.
• Passionate about efficiency, availability, technical quality and system quality.
• Passion to level-up those around you through curiosity and fostering a collaborative and inclusive team environment.
• Proven experience in defining product/technical strategy and driving alignment with cross-functional leaders and stakeholders.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with experience driving initiatives that span across teams, departments and leadership.

Nice-to-Haves

• Hands-on experience with paid advertising platforms (Meta, Google, or similar) — you understand how the ecosystem works, not just the engineering surface.

Compensation

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