Senior Software Engineer, Streaming Infrastructure

Airbnb

3d•$196,000 - $230,000

About The Position

Airbnb’s Data Infrastructure organization builds systems for storing, moving, and transforming data. The Data Movement & Transformation (DMT) group is developing a unified platform that replaces many one-off data movement tools with a reliable, supported way to move data between Airbnb’s storage systems. The Ingestion team builds and operates SpinalTap, a near-real-time change data capture (CDC) streaming platform that sends data from Airbnb’s Aurora and UDS tables to Kafka, and DBExports, which provides periodic full-table snapshots and mutation exports. These systems support teams across payments, fraud detection, financial reporting, search, messaging, notifications, and machine learning. The Senior Software Engineer will design, build, and operate large-scale CDC and batch export systems across Airbnb’s online databases; contribute to the architecture of DMT’s unified data movement platform; and improve reliability, performance, and efficiency. The role involves hands-on coding, design, testing, delivery of multi-month projects in partnership with internal teams and leadership, and participation in on-call operations. The goal is to make it easier for Airbnb engineers to move data into offline systems without requiring deep database or pipeline expertise.

Requirements

At least 5 years of experience building and operating large-scale backend distributed systems, such as data ingestion, streaming, CDC, storage, or data platforms.
Hands-on experience with streaming systems such as Kafka and with database change capture and publishing mechanisms such as binlogs or Debezium.
Ability to take ownership of and work deeply in a complex codebase.
Experience maintaining, analyzing, and debugging production systems at scale.
Ability to write clean, readable, testable, and maintainable code.
Strong collaboration and communication skills in a remote-working environment.
Strong ownership and a track record of delivering on time.

Nice To Haves

Experience building managed or multi-tenant platforms used by other engineering teams.
Familiarity with MySQL or Aurora, schema evolution, or large-scale batch data processing.

Responsibilities

Work hands-on in code, design, and testing, partnering with teams, internal customers, and leadership to deliver multi-month projects on time.
Design, build, and operate large-scale CDC and batch export systems across Airbnb’s online databases.
Help shape the architecture of DMT’s unified data movement platform.
Improve the reliability, performance, and efficiency of systems that support critical business functions.
Make it easier for engineers to move data into offline systems without needing to be database or pipeline experts.
Participate in on-call and improve the operational standards of a platform used by other teams.