# Staff Software Engineer, Service Tools

**Company:** [Airbnb](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/airbnb)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** DevOps / SRE
**Salary:** $212k – $265k/yr
**Experience:** 9+ years
**Skills:** Java, Kotlin, Ruby, Go, C++, Jvm, Bazel, Remote Build Execution, Monorepos, Distributed Systems, APIs, Data Pipelines, Ai-Assisted Development, Code Coverage, Mutation Testing
**Posted:** 2026-08-25

> Leads technical direction for Airbnb’s service developer tooling platform, spanning AI-assisted development, JVM build infrastructure, testing, modernization, and observability. Requires 9+ years of industry experience, strong backend and distributed-systems expertise, and the ability to influence organizations and deliver multi-quarter infrastructure initiatives.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Own multi-quarter, platform-spanning workstreams across Airbnb’s developer lifecycle, including agentic developer workflows, build infrastructure, testing, codebase modernization, and developer observability.
- Advance AI-assisted development through agent skills, tool integrations, evaluation harnesses, and telemetry.
- Scale build and merge infrastructure for a large JVM monorepo, including remote build execution and caching, merge queues, test sharding and selection, and capacity modeling.
- Improve testing coverage, mutation signal, AI-authored tests, local and pre-merge feedback, and testing standards.
- Lead automated codebase modernization, including JDK and Kotlin toolchain upgrades, test-framework migrations, and build-module migrations.
- Use developer and production telemetry to guide priorities and improve developer experience, velocity, debuggability, resilience, reliability, and cost.
- Set technical standards through code and architecture reviews, design documents, incident reviews, and postmortems.
- Mentor engineers and partner with engineering leaders across Airbnb to drive adoption of new capabilities.
- Represent the work through technical writing, conference talks, open source, and vendor partnerships.

## Requirements
- 9+ years of industry experience with a bachelor’s or master’s degree, or 6+ years with a PhD.
- Bachelor’s and/or master’s degree, preferably in computer science, or equivalent experience.
- Proficiency in one or more backend server languages, such as Java, Kotlin, Ruby, Go, or C++.
- Experience with high-scale distributed systems, including APIs, data pipelines, and efficient algorithms.
- Experience owning platform or infrastructure areas end to end and driving multi-quarter technical agendas.
- Deep experience with build systems and large monorepos.
- Extensive JVM experience, including build and test performance, memory, and startup behavior.
- Ability to influence stakeholders and align teams outside the direct reporting line.
- Experience collaborating cross-functionally with design, product, and data science teams.
- Strong measurement, technical writing, architecture, mentoring, and operational-excellence skills.

## Nice to Have
- Bazel and remote build execution experience.
- Experience with coding agents, context engineering, tool integrations, and rigorous agent evaluation.
- Experience with automated refactoring and large-scale developer productivity initiatives.

## Compensation and Benefits
- Base pay range: **$212,000–$265,000 USD**.
- May also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

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