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 CRM Engineering team builds world-class tools that drive growth and foster meaningful relationships between Airbnb and its community, including Hosts, Guests, Law Enforcement, Government Regulators, Local Community Leaders, and more. This team tackles some of the most challenging and unique problems faced by our business. Here are a few examples:
- Growth Platform: Designed to increase supply and retain existing hosts.
- Policy Cloud: Enables Airbnb to engage with regulatory bodies across the globe regarding short-term rental regulations. This platform tracks regulations that impact the Airbnb business and provides intelligence to address unique business challenges.
- Community Platform: Establishes a social platform to drive community enablement, collaboration, and success.
- Agent Tools: Empowers agents to understand and resolve issues that customers are unable to address on their own.
- Aircover Claims Platform: Facilitates the processing of claims for Aircover insurance products, offering protection to both hosts and guests.
Digital channels, including chat, messaging (SMS/WhatsApp), agent tooling, and voice/CTI, are how millions of hosts and guests reach Airbnb every day. As a Staff System Engineer, you will bring a rare combination of deep subject-matter expertise in digital engagement platforms, hands-on systems architecture, and product-building experience to own the technical strategy for how our community engages with Airbnb across these channels.
You will be the go-to technical expert bridging business requirements from Community Support, Trust, and Policy stakeholders with scalable, resilient solutions built on our CRM platform. You will partner closely with Product and Design to take digital engagement initiatives from 0 to 1 and scale them globally, while also lending deep technical expertise to specific teams and projects as needed.
A Typical Day:- Architect and hands-on build digital channel engagement solutions, including chat, messaging, omnichannel routing, and agent tooling, integrated with our broader CRM platform.
- Serve as the subject-matter expert on digital engagement technologies (e.g., Salesforce Digital Engagement/Service Cloud, CTI, messaging APIs), advising engineering and business stakeholders on platform capability, constraints, and tradeoffs.
- Partner with Product, Community Support Operations, and Trust teams to translate engagement strategy and ambiguous business needs into a concrete, multi-year technical roadmap.
- Lead technical design reviews and embed engineering best practices, from design through code review to production operations.
- Drive the full lifecycle of initiatives, from proof-of-concept and architecture through launch, experimentation, and iteration based on engagement metrics.
- Mentor engineers in developing technical and collaboration skills; be the go-to person for technical guidance across the CRM organization.
- Contribute to recruiting the right engineers by participating in interviews and building overall team technical culture.
- 10+ years of relevant engineering experience, including deep, hands-on subject-matter expertise in digital channel engagement platforms (e.g., messaging, chat, omnichannel routing, CTI/voice integrations, Salesforce Digital Engagement or comparable).
- Proven track record building and shipping engagement or CRM products end-to-end, from concept and architecture through launch and iteration, not just maintaining existing systems.
- Strong, current hands-on coding ability and experience with architectural patterns for large-scale, high-availability, customer-facing systems.
- Experience integrating CRM/engagement platforms (e.g., Salesforce Service Cloud, Digital Engagement) via APIs, event-driven architecture, and CTI/telephony integrations.
- Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous business and product requirements into scalable technical designs and a coherent multi-year roadmap.
- Technical leadership experience: setting direction and standards, and driving cross-functional alignment, without relying on formal management authority.
- Experience working in a complex, matrixed organization spanning cross-functional and cross-business stakeholders.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to lead high-level discussions on technology strategy with engineering leaders, product managers, and business stakeholders.
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.
Airbnb Chicago, Illinois, USA Office
Chicago, Illinois, United States, 60611
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