Senior Engineering Manager

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

Auth Infrastructure team is responsible for building the infrastructure around Airbnb’s Authentication and Authorization systems. Authentication systems encompass credentials and sessions management. Authorization systems enable permission management for all Airbnb platform products and services across internal and external Airbnb communities. Together these systems provide developers at Airbnb with the best-in-class infrastructure to build secure and trustworthy applications.

The Difference You Will Make

The team across Auth Infra works on distributed systems that have higher reliability and security requirements than most backend systems or services. The Auth infra systems have a large number of critical services, and any downtime across these services can result in a hard downtime for the Airbnb platform. In addition, the team collaborates closely with the product and infra engineering teams to build new features and evolve the systems to meet the engineering challenges from the business growing and evolving.

As a Senior Engineering Manager, you will empower your teams to build and maintain robust, scalable, and secure systems that underpin the entire Airbnb ecosystem. You will play a pivotal role in shaping the technical vision, strategy, and execution for these critical platforms. This is an opportunity to lead impactful work, mentor exceptional engineers and managers, and contribute to the safety and trust of the Airbnb community.

A Typical Day

• Lead and manage two distinct engineering teams: one focused on user authentication (including login, registration, multi-factor authentication, etc.) and the other on user authorization (managing permissions and access control across Airbnb).
• Define and drive the technical roadmap and strategy for Airbnb's authentication and authorization infrastructure, ensuring alignment with business goals and security and reliability best practices.
• Mentor and develop a high performing team of engineers and managers, providing guidance, feedback, and opportunities for growth. Foster a strong engineering culture within your teams, emphasizing collaboration, innovation, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate effectively with senior engineers, stakeholders and cross-functional teams, including Product Engineering, Security, Trust & Privacy, and other engineering teams, to understand requirements and deliver impactful solutions.
• Sustain efficient operations and lead incident response for your team's critical systems.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies in authentication, authorization, and security, and proactively help the team in adopting best practices and relevant trends from the industry.

Your Expertise

• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years of experience in software engineering, with a strong track record of building and operating high-scale, distributed systems.
• 7+ years of experience in an engineering management role, leading and growing multiple engineering teams, and managing managers.
• Experience in developing long-term strategy in building secure, fault-tolerant and reliable authentication and authorization systems at scale.
• Strong technical proficiency in at least one major programming language (e.g., Java, Python, Go, Ruby).
• Experience working with cloud platforms (preferably AWS, K8s) and related infrastructure.
• Experience with incident management and root cause analysis for critical, high-availability systems.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proven ability to  attract, hire, and retain top engineering talent.  
• Experience working in a fast-paced, agile environment.

Bonus Points

• Deep understanding of authentication and authorization principles and technologies, such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control), and related security protocols.
• Contributions to the engineering community across the industry in the security or identity management space.
• Experience working in a consumer driven tech company with a large user base.

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: [email protected]. 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.