Engineering Manager, User Foundation (Users, Identity & Community)

Airbnb

3d•$204,000 - $255,000•Remote

About The Position

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. User Foundation is a foundational engineering team within Users, Identity, and Community (UIC) in Guest & Host. We build the trusted, unified, privacy-first user and business identity data foundation that powers experiences across Airbnb, supporting product teams (Account, Identity & Privacy, Profile & Community, Membership) and cross‑org partners including Trust, Payments Compliance, and Tax. As Engineering Manager, User Foundation, you will lead the team responsible for Airbnb’s authoritative user data model and its online APIs, and entity event interfaces. The team’s work enables consistent product experiences, ensures compliance and data governance, and unlocks high‑quality AI/Data use cases across the company. The community you will join User Foundation sits at the center of how Airbnb understands and represents people and businesses across the platform. The team builds durable foundations, authoritative data models and interfaces, that many products depend on, and succeeds through close, day‑to-day collaboration with partners across product engineering, data, and infrastructure. You’ll join a group that values strong engineering craftsmanship, and pragmatic execution, with an inclusive culture that emphasizes trust and thoughtful technical innovation. The difference you will make You will lead the team that makes authoritative user and business data the default building block for product development at Airbnb. Your leadership will: Define the multi‑year technical strategy for authoritative user data (individual + business) across online, offline, and events. Drive adoption of consistent source‑of‑truth interfaces so critical user data is read/written through governed systems. Establish and scale user data governance practices (cataloging, auditing, compliance-by-design, privacy-first defaults). Enable AI-powered experiences (e.g., personalization) by building high-quality, trusted, well-governed user data foundations that are safe and easy to use across AI products. Grow a high‑performing team that collaborates effectively across product and infrastructure organizations.

Requirements

10+ years of industry experience with 5+ years in engineering management (or equivalent leadership), including leading teams delivering foundational platforms or shared services.
Strong background in distributed, large-scale backend and data systems: domain modeling, service interfaces (APIs), event-driven architectures, and offline data pipelines.
Demonstrated success driving cross‑org adoption/migrations with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.
Experience building systems with scale, performance, and data privacy, compliance, and governance requirements.
Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to define crisp technical vision, align teams, and influence without authority.
Track record of inclusive leadership, talent development, and building high‑ownership teams.

Nice To Haves

Experience with identity/user/account modeling at scale (individual + business entities, relationships, permissions, authentication and authorization concepts).
Familiarity with data governance practices (cataloging, lineage, auditing, policy enforcement) and partnership with data platform and infrastructure teams.
Experience partnering closely with Trust, Risk, Compliance, or Tax organizations, or understanding about compliance, data auditing, and data governance requirements in these domains.
Experience evolving large systems through incremental migration strategies while maintaining product velocity.

Responsibilities

Define the multi‑year technical strategy for authoritative user data (individual + business) across online, offline, and events.
Drive adoption of consistent source‑of‑truth interfaces so critical user data is read/written through governed systems.
Establish and scale user data governance practices (cataloging, auditing, compliance-by-design, privacy-first defaults).
Enable AI-powered experiences (e.g., personalization) by building high-quality, trusted, well-governed user data foundations that are safe and easy to use across AI products.
Grow a high‑performing team that collaborates effectively across product and infrastructure organizations.