Staff Backend Engineer

Summary

Join Airbnb's Media Foundation team as a Staff Backend Software Engineer and play a key role in designing, building, and optimizing the next-generation media infrastructure. You will lead technical initiatives, drive architectural decisions, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to enhance Airbnb’s media capabilities. This role involves working on large-scale distributed systems processing billions of media assets. A typical day includes designing and implementing scalable backend services, leading architectural decisions, collaborating with various teams, and mentoring engineers. The position offers a competitive salary, bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits and is US-Remote Eligible.

Requirements

• 9+ years of software development experience in a fast paced tech environment with a minimum of 3 years working with media systems
• Strong programming (Java, Kotlin or equivalent) skills for hands-on IC work
• You have excellent communication skills and the ability to work well within a team and with teams across the engineering, product & design organizations
• Experience working with image processing or content video transcoding
• Experience AI/ML-based media processing
• Knowledge of content moderation, media compliance, and rights management

Responsibilities

• Design and implement scalable, high-performance backend services for media processing, storage, and delivery
• Lead architectural decisions and drive technical excellence in media infrastructure participating in regular on-call & improving team’s operational rigor
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams both internal including frontend, mobile, and infrastructure engineers as well as vendors, to enhance media-related experiences
• Mentor and guide engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and innovation
• You will ideate and prototype solutions that address concerns that are unique to the Airbnb Media hosting and media processing

Preferred Qualifications

Passion to level-up those around you through curiosity and fostering a collaborative and inclusive team environment

Benefits

• Bonus
• Equity
• Benefits
• Employee Travel Credits
• Remote work