Staff Software Engineer, Passport & Commerce (Backend)

Airbnb

1d•$212,000 - $265,000•Remote

About The Position

Passport & Commerce builds the trusted account and commerce foundation that lets anyone, anywhere, become part of the Airbnb community — from their first sign-up, through the profile and connections they build, to every booking and business transaction along the way. We're a newly formed org within Guest & Host that brings together identity, account, and commerce foundations under one roof. Our mission is to move Airbnb beyond the transaction — building a world where accounts create trust, value sticks, and what our community earns travels with them, and their businesses, wherever they go. You'll work closely with Payments and Wallet engineering, Identity & Privacy, Profile & Community, and Guest & Host product, design, and data science partners as we stand up this team's roadmap and technical foundations.

Requirements

9+ years of experience designing and scaling complex, distributed backend systems, with a proven track record of technical leadership in high-growth environments
A track record as a technical leader who has set architecture direction for a team or domain — not only delivered individual features
Deep expertise in distributed systems fundamentals, including data consistency, caching, service decomposition, and API design at scale
Experience building or operating systems involving financial transactions, entitlements, or other stateful account data is strongly preferred
Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical decisions across multiple teams
Comfort operating with ambiguity on a newly formed team, including helping define team scope, roadmap, and technical foundations
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across engineering, product, and design partners

Responsibilities

Design and evolve the core services and data models that track account state, eligibility, and entitlements across millions of accounts
Partner with product and design to translate new product concepts into scalable, extensible technical designs
Collaborate with Payments and Wallet engineering to ensure credits, discounts, and host-funded programs settle correctly end-to-end
Set technical direction and lead design reviews across a growing team, mentoring engineers and raising the bar on system design
Drive cross-team architecture decisions with Identity & Privacy and Profile & Community teams to keep account state consistent with Airbnb's broader Passport model
Identify and resolve reliability, scalability, and data-integrity risks before they affect guests or hosts