Senior Software Engineer, Global Markets (Backend)

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.

NOTE: NO VISA SUPPORT

The Community You Will Join:

The Global Markets Tech team drives the evolution of our guest and host experience across international markets through product innovation that accelerates international growth. Expanding in under-penetrated markets is a core pillar of our company strategy. To achieve this, we innovate at every level - adapting our product to the unique needs of every corner of the globe so that every user across our 220+ countries and regions feels right at home.

The team partners closely with Product, Design, Data Science, regional stakeholders, and core platform/vertical teams to translate local market needs into durable, scalable technology that can be piloted quickly and then rolled out broadly.

The Difference You Will Make:

A Senior Software Engineer in Global Markets is expected to deliver measurable international growth impact by building scalable product capabilities across key funnel surfaces (landing → search → pre‑booking) and by improving pricing, promotions, and discounts to increase conversion and customer value across markets.

A Typical Day

• Partner with PM/Design/Data Science to clarify goals, requirements, constraints, and success metrics, and translate them into a sequenced technical plan.

• Write or review technical designs, align tradeoffs, and coordinate dependencies with partner teams across regions.

• Build production code and services with a high quality bar: testing, documentation, instrumentation, and performance/reliability considerations.

• Run design and code reviews, advise engineers, and help drive consistent engineering standards across the team.

• Own delivery: track execution risks, provide stakeholder updates, coordinate launches (including localization/market rollout), and monitor post-launch results to iterate quickly.

Your Expertise

• Fluency in English is required. Japanese or Korean working proficiency is a plus .

• 6+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with a strong track record shipping production systems.

• Solid understanding of large-scale backend architecture and distributed systems patterns (e.g., well-designed APIs, scalable data models, high-throughput services/pipelines, and performance-aware algorithms).

• Proven ability to drive ambiguous problems to resolution: break down open-ended requirements, propose pragmatic solutions, and execute independently while keeping stakeholders aligned.

• Strong programming skills in one or more of the following: Java, Kotlin, Python, Ruby/Ruby on Rails, JavaScript/TypeScript, with experience building and operating backend services.

• High engineering quality bar: you write clean, testable, maintainable code, and you design with reliability, observability, and operational readiness in mind.

• You actively raise the team’s technical bar through thoughtful code reviews, architecture discussions, and sharing best practices that improve overall team productivity.

• Data-informed decision making: you use metrics and experimentation to validate impact, diagnose issues, and iterate toward better outcomes—recognizing that small improvements in these flows can drive meaningful business results.

• Strong collaboration and communication skills: you work effectively across engineering teams and with Product, Design, and Data partners in a global environment.