Senior Machine Learning Engineer, AI Platform

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.

Your Location:

This position is CHINA BASED. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. Your recruiter will inform you what cities you are able to work from depending on your personal legal working identity and Airbnb internal policies.

The Community You Will Join:

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence 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 Community Support Products (CSP) Machine Learning team is the core team responsible for driving CSxAI (Customer Support x Artificial Intelligence) initiatives by adopting the Generative AI technologies to enable an intelligent, scalable and exceptional service experience. The team develops and enhances various AI models, ML services and tools including LLM fine-tuning and optimization, RAG/Search,  LLM evaluation and testing automation, feedback-based learning and guardrail for a wide range of applications in 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 investing in long term innovation to solve the complex problems we face, and to do that we need the very best experts in ML and AI to join us.

The Difference You Will Make:

We believe our current customer experiences in these domains are only scratching the surface of the innovations that are possible, and that science is at the heart of delivering a step-function change for our Guest and and Host on Airbnb. 

You will build and leverage cutting edge AI technologies to transform Airbnb’s customer service by delivering personalized, easy-to-use and proactive customer service experience. 

Many of the initiatives you’ll tackle are in their early conceptual stages. You will have the opportunity to shape these ideas from inception to production, turning visionary concepts into impactful realities.

A Typical Day: 

• Envision, champion, and support the development of novel ML systems, product integrations, and performance optimizations to solve real-world problems

• Work cross-functionally with product, design, and other engineering counterparts to design and build efficient AI solutions for Airbnb CS products

• Learn and share the latest AI/ML technologies with the team across regions( China and the US). 

Your Expertise:

• PhD/Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience
• 4+ years of ML engineering experience, with ownership responsibility over large-scale software systems. 
• Background in the design and development of AI and ML systems and services, and a deep passion for building efficient and scalable ML-powered products
• Experience with LLM driven chatbot and Agentic AI products would be a big plus
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work well within a team and with teams across the engineering, product & design organizations
• Fluency in both English and Mandarin is essential.

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.

Reasonable Accommodations: We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.

A Note on Recruiting Scams: Scammers sometimes pose as Airbnb recruiters to get money or personal information from candidates. A few things that will always be true for Airbnb’s hiring process: our open roles are posted on Airbnb’s Career’s Page at careers.airbnb.com, and our recruiters correspond only from @airbnb.com or @ext.airbnb.com email addresses. Our recruiters will never ask for your Social Security number, bank account details, passport, or payment app information while you are interviewing.  We’ll also never ask you to pay a fee, send money, deposit or cash a check, or purchase work-related equipment (such as a company laptop) during the interview process. We encourage candidates to remain vigilant of these recruiting scams and not share sensitive information if you do not believe an individual is actually affiliated with Airbnb.