Senior Software Engineer, Storage

Airbnb is a global platform connecting hosts and guests through stays and experiences. The Senior Software Engineer will work on the Database Kernel team to improve the performance, reliability, and stability of Airbnb’s horizontally scalable NewSQL database, focusing on storage layers, query execution, incident analysis, and upstream contributions.

Responsibilities:

• Dig into the query and storage layers to explain latency differences between B-tree and LSM-based storage engines
• Analyze query plans and execution paths (planning, optimization, operators, and distributed execution) to find and fix sources of SQL latency
• Tune storage engine behavior (compaction, caching, and I/O) for Airbnb's workloads
• Design and implement traffic prioritization at the storage layer for connection pooling
• Drive root cause analysis on high-severity incidents with our open-source vendor, and land fixes upstream

Requirements:

• 5+ years of software engineering, including significant hands-on work on a database storage layer or query execution engine
• Strong SQL skills, plus an understanding of how queries are planned, optimized, and executed at the engine level
• Deep understanding of storage engine internals (e.g., B-tree/LSM, compaction, indexing, I/O) and/or query processing (e.g., planning, optimization, execution operators)
• Experience with distributed databases (replication, consensus, transactions) is a strong plus, and familiarity with NewSQL systems like TiDB is a bonus
• Ability to own and dive deeply into a complex database codebase, ideally an open-source one
• Experience analyzing and debugging high-severity production incidents, especially performance and latency problems
• Writes clean, testable, maintainable code
• Strong collaboration and communication skills in a remote working environment
• Strong ownership and a consistent track record of delivery
• Upstream contributions are a plus