---
title: 'Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Data & Eval at Airbnb'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-machine-learning-engineer-data-eval-airbnb-united-states-4yj9cd8w5nmc'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Data & Eval at Airbnb

- **Company:** Airbnb
- **Location:** United States
- **Compensation:** $244k–$305k
- **Posted:** 2025-03-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://careers.airbnb.com/positions/6757302?gh_jid=6757302

## Job description

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 Community You Will Join:

AI and ML are at the heart of the Airbnb product. From Trust to Payments, and from Customer Service to Marketing, we rely on ML to ensure that guests and hosts have the best possible experience with Airbnb.

The Core ML team is responsible for driving Airbnb Assistance Engineering initiatives by adopting Generative AI technologies to enable an intelligent, scalable, and exceptional service experience. The team develops and enhances AI models, ML services, and tools including LLM fine-tuning and optimization, RAG/Search, LLM evaluation and testing automation, feedback-based learning, and guardrails for a wide range of applications at Airbnb.

The richness of Airbnb's data, the complexity of its marketplace, and the variety innate in our product mean that we need to operate at the state of the art of AI practice. We are committed to long-term innovation to solve complex problems, and to do that we need experienced ML

​​The Difference You Will Make:

In this Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineering role, you will set technical direction and lead execution for ML evaluation and the end-to-end data flywheel powering Airbnb Assistance Engineering (e.g., assistive agents, issue resolution, and tooling). Your work will define how we measure quality, how we turn feedback into learning signals, and how we continuously improve models and products safely and efficiently. You will partner closely with product, engineering, design, operations to build evaluation systems that are trusted, scalable, and actionable - connecting offline metrics to online outcomes.

A Typical Day:

- Define evaluation strategy and success metrics for GenAI systems, aligning offline evaluation with online business and customer experience outcomes.
- Build and scale evaluation frameworks (golden sets, synthetic data, automated regressions, rubric-based grading, LLM-as-judge where appropriate) with strong controls for bias, drift, and reliability.
- Design the data flywheel: instrumentation, feedback collection, data quality checks, labeling strategy, dataset versioning, and governance to support continuous improvement.
- Lead cross-functional quality initiatives across product, ops, and engineering, driving clarity on what “good” looks like and how teams act on evaluation results.
- Develop and productionize pipelines for dataset creation, model monitoring, evaluation-at-scale, and continuous testing (pre-deploy and post-deploy).
- Drive technical decisions and architecture for evaluation and data infrastructure, balancing speed, rigor, cost, and safety.

Minimum Qualifications:

- Educational Background: PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
- Industry Experience: 10+ years building, testing, and shipping ML/AI systems end-to-end; including 2+ years of experience with GenAI/LLM systems in production.
- Leadership Experience: 5+ years leading large, ambiguous technical initiatives as a senior IC, influencing roadmap and engineering/science direction across teams.
- Technical Proficiency:
- Deep expertise in evaluation methodology (offline/online alignment, metric design, human-in-the-loop evaluation, A/B testing, power analysis, regression testing).
- Hands-on experience with GenAI systems, including orchestration, retrieval, tool calling, memory, etc.
- Experience building data pipelines and quality systems (labeling workflows, dataset curation, versioning, monitoring, and governance).
- Solid ML fundamentals and best practices (model selection, training/serving, monitoring, reliability, and model lifecycle management).

Preferred Qualifications:

- Customer Support Systems: Experience applying ML/AI to customer support workflows (e.g., agent assist, classification/routing, resolution recommendation, QA).
- Infrastructure & Quality at Scale: Experience building robust evaluation platforms for agent behavior validation, safety/guardrails, and continuous improvement.
- Agile Practice for Applied AI: Proven ability to take evaluation and data flywheel work from incubation to production, iterating quickly while maintaining scientific rigor.

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. [Click here](https://careers.airbnb.com/) for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from. 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.

Pay Range $244,000—$305,000 USD

## About Airbnb

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Airbnb operates a global marketplace for unique stays, experiences, and adventures, connecting hosts with travelers.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NASDAQ: ABNB)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2007
- **Founders**: Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Online Travel & Hospitality, Software Development
- **Target customers**: B2C (travelers), C2C (hosts), with some B2B (Airbnb for Work, business travel)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To create a world where anyone can belong anywhere, providing unique travel experiences and economic opportunity for hosts.

## Products & Services
- **Airbnb Stays**: The core platform for booking short-term rentals (entire homes, private rooms, shared spaces) in over 220 countries and regions.
- **Airbnb Experiences**: Curated, hands-on activities hosted by locals (e.g., cooking classes, guided hikes, workshops).
- **Airbnb Adventures**: Multi-day, small-group immersive trips led by local experts.
- **Airbnb for Work**: A service for companies to manage business travel and team retreats.
- **Luxe**: A premium tier offering vetted, high-end vacation homes with dedicated trip designers.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: ~$77.8B (as of recent data)
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of $12.2B (based on available data)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Y Combinator
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - **From 2007 to present**: 1.5 billion guest arrivals globally.
  - **Headcount Growth**: Employs ~21,644 people, a **+30.6% year-over-year increase**.
  - **Global Reach**: Operates in 176 countries with a strong international team (e.g., offices/employees in India, Italy, Canada, Brazil, UK, Australia, China).
  - **Public Company Status**: IPO in 2020, trading on NASDAQ.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Network Effects**: A massive, global two-sided network of 5 million+ hosts and 1.5 billion arrivals creates a formidable moat that is very difficult for competitors to replicate.
- **Brand & Trust**: A globally recognized brand synonymous with alternative accommodations and travel experiences.
- **Liquidity & Inventory**: Unrivaled inventory depth across 220+ countries, offering unique stays not found in traditional hotels.
- **Live and Work Anywhere Policy**: A radical shift in work culture that offers flexibility and a competitive edge in talent acquisition, allowing employees to live anywhere in their country of employment with no compensation change.

## Strategic Focus
- **International & Mainstream Expansion**: Continuing to grow its user base beyond early adopters into mainstream travel and new international markets.
- **Product Diversification**: Pushing hard into "Experiences" and "Adventures" to reduce reliance on accommodations and capture more of the travel wallet.
- **Leveraging AI & Technology**: Investing in AI (e.g., AI Engineer roles in Community Support) to improve the guest and host experience, search, and trust & safety.
- **Return to Travel & "Live Anywhere"**: Capitalizing on the post-pandemic shift towards remote work and long-term stays with its "Live and Work Anywhere" initiative.

## Why Work Here
- **Flexibility**: A ground-breaking **"Live and Work Anywhere"** policy. Employees can work from home, an office, or temporarily anywhere in the world (with approval). Compensation is not changed when moving within their country of employment.
- **Compelling Mission**: An opportunity to work on a platform that creates connection and economic empowerment for millions of people globally.
- **Diversity & Belonging**: Strong commitment to inclusion with numerous Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) such as Able@, Black@, Women@, Parents@, and many more.
- **Great Benefits**: 
  - **Travel Credit**: Quarterly Airbnb travel and experiences credit.
  - **Education**: Annual educational stipend.
  - **Wellbeing**: Subsidized healthcare, mental health support, family care support, and generous parental leave.
  - **Equity**: Competitive compensation including equity and an Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP).
- **Culture**: Values-driven with a focus on "Be a Host" (caring, open, encouraging), "Champion the Mission," and "Embrace the Adventure."
- **Work Model**: Supports a mix of remote, hybrid (be close to an office), and onsite work, giving employees significant control over their schedule.
- **Talent Community**: A highly creative and collaborative environment with industry-leading talent.

## Sources
1. [careers.airbnb.com](https://careers.airbnb.com/)
2. [careers.airbnb.com/life-at-airbnb/](https://careers.airbnb.com/life-at-airbnb/)
3. [airbnb.com](https://www.airbnb.com/)
4. [linkedin.com/company/airbnb](https://sg.linkedin.com/company/airbnb)
5. [careers.airbnb.com/positions/](https://careers.airbnb.com/positions/)

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