Senior Data Scientist, Airbnb
Guest Travel Insurance, Algorithms
$179-210k
+ Bonus + Equity
Community marketplace for holiday accomodation
Open for applications
Community marketplace for holiday accomodation
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$179-210k
+ Bonus + Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.
Role
Who you are
- 5+ years of relevant industry experience (e.g., ML scientist, tech lead, junior faculty) and a Master’s degree or PhD with 2+ yrs in a relevant field
- Proven hands-on experience building and shipping personalization and recommendation systems at scale: strong intuition for feature engineering, user modeling, and the full ML lifecycle (training, serving, monitoring, iteration). Experience with LLMs, Computer Vision or content-understanding topics is a strong plus
- Strong fluency in Python and SQL; hands-on experience with TensorFlow or PyTorch, Airflow, and a data warehouse environment
- Deep understanding of ML algorithms (gradient-boosted trees, deep learning, optimization) and experiment design—including A/B testing, multi-armed bandits, and the practical constraints of running experiments at scale. Causal inference skills are a plus
- Exceptional communicator: you can make complex ML work legible to engineers, product managers, legal, and executives alike— written and verbal. You treat communication as a core part of the job, not an afterthought
- Self-directed and passionate: you’re energized by a fast-moving environment where there are always more good ideas than time; you hold yourself to a high standard without being asked, take initiative to unblock yourself, and find genuine satisfaction in shipping things that matter to guests
- Product-oriented mindset: you keep the guest experience at the center of technical decisions and bring conceptual and innovative thinking to how you frame and solve problems. Publications or presentations in recognized venues are a plus
What the job involves
- We’re looking for a machine learning expert who is excited to own hard problems end-to-end—from prototype to production. You’ll have direct scope to contribute and lead across:
- Package personalization & ML-based recommendation: Evolve rule-based guest segmentation into a full ML recommendation system that surfaces the right insurance (e.g., trip cancellation, accidental damage coverage, on-trip protection) to each guest based on purchase intent, trip attributes, listing signals, and user history
- Content personalization: Build models that rank and select benefit messaging for each guest—deciding which coverages to highlight, in what order, and with what framing—drawing on learnings from segmentation experiments and LLM-assisted content prototyping
- Intent modeling: Develop and productionize ML models (from gradient-boosted trees to deep learning) that predict a guest’s likelihood to value specific coverages, using structured booking data and unstructured signals
- Journey understanding and optimization: Leverage reinforcement learning to personalize across user journey, with understanding on user preferences on entry point, price, notification frequency, and trip characteristics
- High-velocity experimentation: Design and run adaptive experiments to maximize learning within tight traffic constraints; sequence ERFs strategically to keep the personalization roadmap moving
- A Typical Day:
- Dig into experiment results to surface high-impact personalization opportunities; translate what you find into crisp scientific problem formulations that balance rigor with speed-to-learning
- Work closely with product managers, engineers, operations, legal, and privacy partners to align on ML requirements, de-risk design decisions, and gather requirements on explainability and compliance
- Hands-on develop, evaluate, and ship ML models and data pipelines at scale—batch and real-time, structured and unstructured—using Airbnb’s paved-path tooling and AI native mindset
- Prototype and iterate quickly: turn a new idea into a working model in a prototype, get early signals from an experiment, then productionize what works. You move fast and don’t wait to be asked
- Present findings and proposals at team reviews and to technical, product, and executive stakeholders—making complex ML results legible without dumbing them down, and generating conviction on the roadmap ahead
- Stay current with the research community; draw on state-of-the-art advances in recommendation systems, LLMs, and personalization to raise the bar for what the team ships. Occasionally publish externally or present at conferences to advance Airbnb’s scientific 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
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
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 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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