Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Data & Eval

Airbnb is seeking a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer to set technical direction and lead execution for ML evaluation and the end-to-end data flywheel powering Airbnb Assistance Engineering (e.g., assistive agents, issue resolution, and tooling). This role will define how we measure quality, how we turn feedback into learning signals, and how we continuously improve models and products safely and efficiently.

• Define evaluation strategy and success metrics for GenAI systems, aligning offline evaluation with online business and customer experience outcomes.
• Build and scale evaluation frameworks (golden sets, synthetic data, automated regressions, rubric-based grading, LLM-as-judge where appropriate) with strong controls for bias, drift, and reliability.
• Design the data flywheel: instrumentation, feedback collection, data quality checks, labeling strategy, dataset versioning, and governance to support continuous improvement.
• Lead cross-functional quality initiatives across product, ops, and engineering, driving clarity on what “good” looks like and how teams act on evaluation results.
• Develop and productionize pipelines for dataset creation, model monitoring, evaluation-at-scale, and continuous testing (pre-deploy and post-deploy).
• Drive technical decisions and architecture for evaluation and data infrastructure, balancing speed, rigor, cost, and safety.

• PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 10+ years building, testing, and shipping ML/AI systems end-to-end; including 2+ years of experience with GenAI/LLM systems in production.
• 5+ years leading large, ambiguous technical initiatives as a senior IC, influencing roadmap and engineering/science direction across teams.
• Deep expertise in evaluation methodology (offline/online alignment, metric design, human-in-the-loop evaluation, A/B testing, power analysis, regression testing).
• Hands-on experience with GenAI systems, including orchestration, retrieval, tool calling, memory, etc.
• Experience building data pipelines and quality systems (labeling workflows, dataset curation, versioning, monitoring, and governance).
• Solid ML fundamentals and best practices (model selection, training/serving, monitoring, reliability, and model lifecycle management).

• Experience applying ML/AI to customer support workflows (e.g., agent assist, classification/routing, resolution recommendation, QA).
• Experience building robust evaluation platforms for agent behavior validation, safety/guardrails, and continuous improvement.
• Proven ability to take evaluation and data flywheel work from incubation to production, iterating quickly while maintaining scientific rigor.

Base pay range: $244,000—$305,000 USD. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

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.

Airbnb values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.