Senior Staff Backend Software Engineer, GraphQL at Airbnb

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: • Viaduct is a unified data access layer connecting most of Airbnb’s online data. More than 70% of Airbnb’s API traffic flows through the Viaduct platform. • Residing at the center of Airbnb’s tech stack between the user-facing products and backend infrastructure, Viaduct provides a global schema & query system through a GraphQL interface. • The Viaduct team is a very tenured and experienced team, setting the best practices and next-gen architecture for Airbnb. • As part of the Application Platform pillar of Infrastructure, we work closely with partner infra teams (Build Infra, Service Platform, CI/CD, Reliability, Observability, Developer Platform to name a few) as well as product engineers. • We treat our platform as a product and follow the principles of good Platform Engineering • Viaduct has been running in production for over six years and the team has gained a lot of experience in operating a GraphQL platform at scale. These insights informed the major rewrite - called Viaduct Modern - which we’re in the process of launching and continue to evolve. You will join the effort to create the best developer experience of hundreds of engineers at Airbnb using our revolutionary GraphQL platform. • Viaduct has been released as an Open Source project. Your contributions to the Viaduct platform will not only serve Airbnb-internal developers, but also any member of the Open Source community who chooses to adopt Viaduct. The Difference You Will Make: • Orchestrate and influence multiple technical tracks on the team from the core query engine and performance infrastructure to API ergonomics and reliability tooling, ensuring they interlock into a coherent, world-class developer platform. • Champion the evolution of Viaduct’s global GraphQL schema: guide the multi-partner steering committee, strengthen governance processes, and drive a long-term vision that scales with Airbnb’s growing product surface and data-as-a-service strategy. • Act as a multiplier for senior talent on the team: mentor teammates, cultivate technical leadership across Viaduct sub-teams, and foster an environment where every engineer can drive impactful initiatives. • Serve as a key technical voice partnering with product, infrastructure, and leadership stakeholders to align Viaduct’s roadmap with Airbnb’s strategic objectives. • Shape how hundreds of engineers and external open-source adopters build, ship, and operate GraphQL services by advancing Viaduct Modern and defining the next wave of capabilities. A Typical Day: • Dive deep into Viaduct’s engine, API layer, build system and performance tooling, identifying cross-cutting opportunities to raise reliability, efficiency, and developer delight. • Pair with teammates to untangle complex challenges, providing architectural guidance while amplifying their ownership and growth. • Facilitate the Viaduct Schema Steering Committee: set agendas, arbitrate proposals, and ensure decisions reflect diverse product needs and long-term maintainability across many systems and use cases. • Embrace and be a role model for an AI-first engineering approach, using LLM-powered agents to generate and iterate on code while you focus on problem-solving, system design, and quality oversight. • Partner with tenant teams to troubleshoot production issues, design self-service APIs, and evangelize GraphQL best practices through docs, talks, and office hours. • Contribute to and demonstrate ownership of the open-source Viaduct project garnering feedback from the community and shaping our external roadmap. Your Expertise: • 12+ years of backend & platform engineering designing, building, and operating mission-critical distributed systems at scale. • Proven experience guiding multi-year technical roadmaps: aligning long-term platform vision with day-to-day execution across multiple sub-teams or “tracks,” and influencing without relying on formal authority. • Deep expertise in GraphQL, API gateways, and schema design/federation. You have led the evolution of organization-wide schemas or contracts and can articulate best-in-class governance patterns (versioning, deprecation, breaking-change management). • Builder of developer experience & tooling: you treat internal developers as customers and champion self-service, documentation, and delightful DX. • Hands-on with modern languages (e.g., Kotlin/Java) and comfortable evaluating and introducing new technologies including AI-assisted development workflows (LLMs, code generation). • Exceptional communication and influence skills, equally effective white-boarding with senior ICs, partnering with cross-functional leads, and presenting strategy to executives and the broader engineering community. 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 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. Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging: Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply. We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: [Upgrade to PRO to see contact]. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process. We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application. 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