Staff Software Engineer – Tech Foundations

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Establish the technical vision for a key segment of Airbnb's Observability platform and guide it from design to production.

• Enhance the metrics pipeline utilizing OpenTelemetry, vmagent, and Grafana Mimir while managing costs through aggregation, sampling, and filtering out unused metrics.

• Substitute outdated log aggregation with an OpenTelemetry-driven pipeline and advance log and trace storage using OpenSearch.

• Create a swift, dependable query layer for engineers and AI agents, incorporating rate limiting, access control, isolation, and caching.

• Equip teams with self-service capabilities for visibility and management over telemetry costs, including unit costs and controls for granularity, sampling, and retention.

• Enhance detection times through anomaly detection and automated correlation across various signals.

• Spearhead the design and delivery of distributed systems from prototype to production deployment.

• Produce tested, readable, and maintainable code while contributing to upstream open-source initiatives.

• Synchronize roadmaps between Observability and partner infrastructure and product teams.

• Lead decisions regarding build, buy, and open-source options.

• Articulate reliability, cost, and developer productivity trade-offs and return on investment to engineering leadership.

• Mentor engineers and enhance design reviews, operational readiness, and on-call procedures.

• Assist Airbnb engineers in instrumenting services and provide self-service solutions for debugging production issues.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 9 years of relevant industry experience.

• Proven history of constructing and managing large-scale distributed systems in a production environment.

• Experience in directing the technical course of a system or multi-team project from start to finish.

• Extensive knowledge in at least one telemetry domain at scale: metrics, logs, or distributed tracing.

• Proficient coding abilities in Go or Java/Kotlin.

• Comfortable navigating unfamiliar codebases, including upstream open source.

• Familiarity with Kubernetes, AWS, and service mesh technologies like Istio and Envoy.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce design documents and perform trade-off analyses for engineering leadership.

• Must reside in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity.

🏝️ Benefits

• Eligibility for bonuses.

• Equity participation opportunities.

• Access to benefits.

• Employee Travel Credits.

• Remote work arrangement eligibility.

• Occasional work at an Airbnb office or participation in offsite events, as agreed with the manager.

• Disability accommodations provided throughout the recruitment process.