Senior Staff Backend Software Engineer, GraphQL

Airbnb is a global company that has revolutionized travel through unique stays and experiences. They are seeking a Senior Staff Backend Software Engineer to lead the development of the Viaduct platform, a critical component of Airbnb's tech stack that focuses on enhancing the developer experience through a GraphQL interface.

Responsibilities:

• Orchestrate and influence multiple technical tracks on the team from the core query engine and performance infrastructure to API ergonomics and reliability tooling, ensuring they interlock into a coherent, world-class developer platform
• Champion the evolution of Viaduct’s global GraphQL schema: guide the multi-partner steering committee, strengthen governance processes, and drive a long-term vision that scales with Airbnb’s growing product surface and data-as-a-service strategy
• Act as a multiplier for senior talent on the team: mentor teammates, cultivate technical leadership across Viaduct sub-teams, and foster an environment where every engineer can drive impactful initiatives
• Serve as a key technical voice partnering with product, infrastructure, and leadership stakeholders to align Viaduct’s roadmap with Airbnb’s strategic objectives
• Shape how hundreds of engineers and external open-source adopters build, ship, and operate GraphQL services by advancing Viaduct Modern and defining the next wave of capabilities
• Dive deep into Viaduct’s engine, API layer, build system and performance tooling, identifying cross-cutting opportunities to raise reliability, efficiency, and developer delight
• Pair with teammates to untangle complex challenges, providing architectural guidance while amplifying their ownership and growth
• Facilitate the Viaduct Schema Steering Committee: set agendas, arbitrate proposals, and ensure decisions reflect diverse product needs and long-term maintainability across many systems and use cases
• Embrace and be a role model for an AI-first engineering approach, using LLM-powered agents to generate and iterate on code while you focus on problem-solving, system design, and quality oversight
• Partner with tenant teams to troubleshoot production issues, design self-service APIs, and evangelize GraphQL best practices through docs, talks, and office hours
• Contribute to and demonstrate ownership of the open-source Viaduct project garnering feedback from the community and shaping our external roadmap

Requirements:

• 12+ years of backend & platform engineering designing, building, and operating mission-critical distributed systems at scale
• Proven experience guiding multi-year technical roadmaps: aligning long-term platform vision with day-to-day execution across multiple sub-teams or 'tracks,' and influencing without relying on formal authority
• Deep expertise in GraphQL, API gateways, and schema design/federation. You have led the evolution of organization-wide schemas or contracts and can articulate best-in-class governance patterns (versioning, deprecation, breaking-change management)
• Builder of developer experience & tooling: you treat internal developers as customers and champion self-service, documentation, and delightful DX
• Hands-on with modern languages (e.g., Kotlin/Java) and comfortable evaluating and introducing new technologies including AI-assisted development workflows (LLMs, code generation)
• Exceptional communication and influence skills, equally effective white-boarding with senior ICs, partnering with cross-functional leads, and presenting strategy to executives and the broader engineering community