Y Combinator Software Engineer, Guest & Host - Notifications
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.
Location
This position needs to be based in the Beijing, China office 3 days a week. No Relocation and Visa Support
The Community You Will Join
The Notifications team at Airbnb is dedicated to designing and building the core notification systems that deliver seamless and effective notification experiences to our guests and hosts globally. We collaborate with product teams across the company to understand notification needs and empower them through scalable solutions. By leveraging modern technology and thoughtful governance, we strive to enhance guest and host engagement, minimize user fatigue, and drive meaningful business outcomes.
The Difference You Will Make
We are looking for backend engineers who are passionate about building reliable systems and delivering user impact through their work.
You will work in a global collaboration environment to turn product and engineering ideas into production systems. You will contribute to the development and evolution of our notification platform, help improve delivery timing and channel selection, and build scalable solutions that support product teams across Airbnb.
A Typical Day
- Collaborate with engineers and cross-functional partners to understand requirements, prioritize work, and scope projects within your team’s roadmap.
- Contribute to technical design discussions and align implementation details with teammates and partner teams.
- Write clean, testable, and maintainable code to build backend services and platform capabilities.
- Participate in on-call rotation and contribute to operational excellence by improving runbooks, monitoring, and rollback readiness.
- Debug production issues, follow through on fixes, and improve system reliability in the areas you own.
- Mentor newer engineers within the team through code reviews, design discussions, and day-to-day collaboration.
Your Expertise
- 3+ years of experience in a hands-on software engineering role, or equivalent practical experience.
- Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
- Proficiency in one or more JVM-based languages such as Java, Kotlin, or Scala.
- Experience building backend systems or services in a service-oriented or distributed systems environment.
- Ability to drive alignment, manage projects and effectively collaborate with stakeholders.
- Capable of making data driven decisions and articulating tradeoffs in any technical decisions.
- Fluent communication in both English and Chinese.