Staff Data Scientist, Airbnb

$192-243k

SQL
Python
R
Expert level
Remote in US

More information about location

Airbnb

Community marketplace for holiday accomodation

Open for applications

Airbnb

Community marketplace for holiday accomodation

1001+ employees

B2CHospitalityB2BTravelMarketplaceSharing Economy

Open for applications

$192-243k

SQL
Python
R
Expert level
Remote in US

More information about location

1001+ employees

B2CHospitalityB2BTravelMarketplaceSharing Economy

Company mission

To create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.

Role

Who you are

  • 9+ years of relevant industry experience (e.g. ML scientist, tech lead, junior faculty) and a Master’s degree or PhD in a quantitative field
  • Deep understanding of Machine Learning best practices (eg. training/serving skew minimization, A/B test, feature engineering, feature/model selection) and algorithms (eg. gradient boosted trees, neural networks/deep learning, optimization)
  • Industry experience building end-to-end Machine Learning infrastructure and/or building and productionizing Machine Learning models
  • Strong fluency in Python or R for hands-on IC work and advanced data analysis in SQL at scale
  • Comfort to collaborate with software engineers to understand complex systems and abstracted logs
  • Proven ability to communicate clearly and effectively to audiences of varying technical levels. Proven mix of strong intellectual curiosity with high level of pragmatism and engagement with the technical community, that demonstrates an eagerness to learn and share
  • Knowledge of experimentation and statistical biases. Familiarity with multi-sided marketplaces
  • Nice to have: Hands on experience with large language models, i.e. BERT, LaMDA, GPT-2/3/4, LLaMa

What the job involves

  • The Marketing Technology focuses on building the best-in-class platform and measurement capabilities to enable marketing and merchandising at Airbnb
  • We build products that are used by our stakeholders across the company including Marketing (Brand and Performance), Guest Experience, Host, Policy, and more
  • Our Mission is to enable marketing and product teams to effectively deliver highly personalized and relevant marketing campaigns to the Airbnb community, both on-site and off-site
  • As one of the most senior Machine Learning Scientists on the team, you will be hands-on in building blue-sky prototypes of data products to pursue opportunities for optimizing and personalizing marketing to engage with Guests and Hosts throughout their journeys with Airbnb
  • Our team works on interesting problems across a diverse collection of Airbnb’s largest datasets
  • We are committed to applying innovation and creativity towards extracting a foundational understanding of our user, amidst the richness and heterogeneity of their complex behaviors and preferences
  • Projects will leverage AI, LLM, and recommendation algorithm to inform personalizing marketing campaigns and to develop future-proofing marketing strategies on generative AI
  • Extract signals from large-scale structured, unstructured, and user journey data to generate ML-driven insights for improving the efficiency and performances of Airbnb marketing
  • Demonstrate good judgment in selecting and evaluating methods and techniques for obtaining solutions
  • Design, run, and diagnose experiments to validate hypotheses and performance of data prototypes
  • Design systems that optimize the marketing engagement with users
  • Work closely with ML Engineering team as a science partner on technical projects to understand user preferences
  • Build data products, model, and identify user intent at various stages of the user product journey
  • Research, present, and publish internally and externally, to engage and advance Airbnb’s standing in the scientific community
  • Focus time – To build machine learning prototypes, develop data mastery to uncover learnings, and formulate structured frameworks to classify our users’ online product experience and interpret their behaviors
  • Autonomy – To apply and investigate state-of-the-art innovations to uplevel Airbnb status-quo approaches to technical problems
  • Influence – Clearly scope the technical solutions, milestones of long term innovative projects and align with stakeholders for adoption
  • Regularly present work internally at monthly meetings to technical, engineering and product stakeholders to iterate and generate excitement on roadmap progress
  • Mentorship – Provide technical guidance to junior team members and be accountable for the project outcome
  • Publish externally and engage with the scientific community to advance Airbnb’s standing

Our take

When Airbnb was originally founded, the product helped customers book air mattresses on people's apartment floors. Since then, Airbnb has had over a billion customers hosted through its platform. With more than 4 million registered hosts worldwide, it has grown into a major player in the hospitality sector.

Airbnb has been successful in disrupting the traditional holiday lettings sector. Before it existed accommodation was limited to hotels and bed and breakfasts, but Airbnb has mainstreamed the idea of renting out spare rooms or even entire homes. It has created a new sector of hosts purchasing properties to rent out on the platform and provides a level of flexibility and a range of offerings not previously possible for travelers.

Perhaps a victim of its own success, by 2022 supply of Airbnb-listed properties began to outstrip demand in some markets, as hosts overestimated the appetite for domestic travel. However, the company is still posting strong financials and has unveiled new tools to support its hosts in a tougher rental market. With a healthy bottom line and a huge user base, Airbnb is very likely to overcome the current market turbulence and continue its growth.

Kirsty headshot

Kirsty

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Top investors

Some candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

25% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Funding (last 2 of 10 rounds)

Apr 2020

$500m

GROWTH EQUITY VC

Mar 2017

$447.8m

SERIES F

Total funding: $3.8bn

Company benefits

  • Paid volunteer time
  • Health food and snacks
  • Generous parental and family leave
  • Learning and development
  • Annual travel and experiences credit

Company values

  • Champion the Mission: We’re united with our community to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere
  • Be a Host: We're caring, open, and encouraging to everyone we work with
  • Embrace the Adventure: We’re driven by curiosity, optimism, and the belief that every person can grow
  • Be a Cereal Entrepreneur: We’re determined and creative in transforming our bold ambitions into reality

Company HQ

Showplace Square, San Francisco, CA

Leadership

Brian Chesky

(Co-Founder & CEO)

Previously an Industrial Designer, studying at Rhode Island School of Design.

Nathan Blecharczyk

(Co-Founder & CSO)

Studied Computer Science at Harvard, and had around 4 years of professional Software Engineering experience before founding Airbnb, including interning at Microsoft.

Joe Gebbia

(Co-Founder)

Also studied Industrial Design at Rhode Island, and previously founded various design-related startups

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