Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Summary

Join Airbnb's Payments team as a Staff ML Engineer and spearhead the development of cutting-edge AI solutions, including LLM-powered workflows and real-time fraud detection systems. You will design, build, and deploy large-scale AI applications, collaborating with cross-functional teams to optimize payment processes and enhance the user experience. This role requires 9+ years of experience in applied AI/ML, strong programming skills, and expertise in modern AI/LLM workflows. You will mentor team members and contribute to Airbnb's broader AI strategy. The position is US-remote eligible with occasional office work or offsite attendance. A competitive salary and benefits package are offered.

Requirements

• 9+ years of industry experience in applied AI/ML, inclusive MS or PhD in relevant fields
• Strong programming (Python/Java) and data engineering skills
• Proven mastery of modern AI/LLM workflows — prompt engineering, fine-tuning (LoRA, RLHF), hallucination mitigation, safety guardrails, and rigorous online/offline testing to minimize training-inference drift and ensure reliable outcomes
• Hands-on experience with at least three of the following: PyTorch/TensorFlow , scalable inference stacks (Triton, vLLM), vector search, orchestration/MLOps platforms (Kubeflow, Airflow), large-scale data streaming & processing (Spark, Ray, Kafka)
• Demonstrated success designing, deploying, and monitoring production AI systems—e.g., RAG pipelines, personalization engines, generative content services—complete with drift/cost/latency monitoring, automated re-training triggers, and cross-functional collaboration that translates ambiguous business needs into measurable AI impact

Responsibilities

• Spearhead LLM agents, real-time anomaly detectors, and other breakthrough solutions that solve real-world problems and create product magic
• Collaborate with product, engineering, ops, and data science to spot high-leverage opportunities, refine AI/ML requirements, make principled architecture choices, and measure business value with clear, data-driven metrics
• Design, train, deploy, and operate large-scale AI applications for both batch and streaming workloads, ensuring low latency, high reliability, and continuous improvement via automated monitoring and retraining loops
• Mentor and inspire teammates, fostering a collaborative, experimentation-driven environment where cutting-edge research meets production excellence and every engineer is empowered to push AI boundaries at Airbnb

Preferred Qualifications

Prior knowledge of AI/ML Applications in the Payments domain is highly desirable

Benefits

• Bonus
• Equity
• Benefits
• Employee Travel Credits