Description
Job Title: Staff Software Engineer, Authorization
Location: Remote - USA
Description:
Airbnb is seeking a highly experienced Staff Software Engineer to join its Authorization Infrastructure team. The successful candidate will be responsible for designing, developing, and evolving Airbnb's authorization platform, shaping the roadmap, architecture, and delivery while ensuring high reliability, performance, and operational excellence at scale.
The Authorization Infrastructure team builds and operates Himeji, the authorization system powering over 8 million authorization checks per second that underpins every access to data and resources at Airbnb. Our mission is to make authorization reliable, secure, and correct by default, removing the burden from every team to solve access from first principles.
As a Staff Software Engineer on Authorization Infrastructure, you will own the long-term technical strategy and architectural direction of the authorization platform, defining how it evolves to support AI-era patterns including natural language policies, contextual access decisions, and multi-principal agentic workflows.
Success in this role means advancing Himeji's core architecture northstar, securing cross-team alignment on AI agent authorization, and establishing Airbnb-wide engineering standards for what 'paved path authorization' looks like at every product surface.
Responsibilities:
- Lead the design, development, and evolution of Airbnb's authorization platform, shaping roadmap, architecture, and delivery while ensuring high reliability, performance, and operational excellence at scale.
- Help drive the next generation of authorization for AI and agentic workflows, defining clear access models for agents and building systems that enforce correctness, least-privilege access, and end-to-end auditability.
- Partner with InfoSec, AI/ML Infra, Product, Privacy, and Data teams to align on authorization standards and drive adoption across the platform.
- Lead design and execution of high-impact, high-risk authorization initiatives across multiple teams and systems.
- Set and uphold engineering standards through design reviews, technical leadership, and mentorship of senior engineers.
Requirements:
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time designing and operating large-scale, high-reliability distributed systems.
- Deep expertise in authorization, access control, or identity systems, including policy models, permission frameworks, or trust infrastructure at production scale.
- Demonstrated track record of owning complex, cross-organizational technical strategy: authoring foundational RFCs, building alignment across teams with competing priorities, and making high-stakes architectural commitments.
- Experience influencing engineering standards beyond your immediate team, at the engineering council, org-wide, or across platform and product organizations.
- Strong communication and technical leadership skills, with the ability to engage effectively across engineering, security, product leadership, and external partners.
- Familiarity with AI agent architectures and the security and authorization challenges they introduce is a strong plus.
Benefits:
- Competitive salary range: $212,000-$265,000 USD
- Bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits
- Opportunity to work with a highly experienced team and contribute to the growth and success of Airbnb
- Flexible remote work arrangement
- Access to professional development opportunities and training programs
- Collaborative and dynamic work environment
- Opportunities for growth and advancement within the company
Note: The salary range is based on the provided information and may vary based on individual circumstances.