Staff Data Scientist, Marketplace Optimization and Ranking

Job Description

The Community You Will Join:

You will join the Search and Personalization Data Science team, which drives how guests discover homes on Airbnb. Search is the core entry point to the marketplace, and our team works at the intersection of ranking systems, marketplace dynamics, and emerging AI-powered search experiences.

We build the data products, modeling frameworks, and experimentation systems that power Airbnb’s search and recommendation stack. Our work ensures search results are highly relevant for guests while supporting the long-term health of the marketplace by balancing demand, supply, and ecosystem quality.

This team partners closely with Relevance Engineering, Product, and AI Search teams to develop new ranking approaches, evaluate product changes, and guide decision-making through rigorous measurement and modeling.

The Difference You Will Make:

You will develop models, measurement frameworks, and data products that improve how listings are ranked, recommended, and discovered.

Your work will focus on three key areas:

• Develop models and analytical frameworks that improve listing ranking and recommendation. This includes incorporating marketplace dynamics such as listing availability, supply quality, and long-term ecosystem health into ranking decisions.
• Design experiments and evaluation frameworks to understand the impact of search and AI-driven product improvements. You will ensure that product decisions are grounded in rigorous measurement and causal inference.
• Build scalable data products and modeling pipelines that power ranking features, query understanding, and personalization. Your work will help enable the next generation of AI-powered search experiences at Airbnb.

As a Staff-level leader, you will also:

• Partner closely with Relevance Engineering and Product to launch high-impact search improvements

• Set technical direction for modeling and experimentation in Search and Personalization
• Mentor other data scientists and raise the bar for building durable data products
• Connect marketplace thinking, modeling, and experimentation across teams to guide product strategy

A Typical Day:

• Cross-functional collaboration: You will actively collaborate with teams across product, engineering, and operations to integrate data science insights into initiatives aimed at enhancing supply acquisition, retention, and success.
• Stakeholder engagement: You will engage with stakeholders to understand their business objectives and provide data-driven solutions tailored to these goals.
• Focus time – To build machine learning models, develop inference frameworks, and build prototypes and other data products to scale your work.
• Autonomy – To apply and investigate state-of-the-art innovations to uplevel Airbnb status-quo approaches to technical problems
• Regularly present work internally to engineering, product, and business strategy stakeholders to iterate and generate excitement on roadmap progress

Your Expertise:

• 9+ years of relevant industry experience and a Master’s degree or PhD in a quantitative field
• Strong fluency in Python or R for hands-on IC work and SQL for advanced data analysis at scale
• Experience with causal inference and machine learning techniques, ideally in a multi-sided platform setting
• Proven ability to succeed in collaborative environments with cross-functional stakeholders and also in independent work environments
• Proven ability to communicate clearly and effectively to audiences of varying technical levels

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: [email protected]. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process.

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.