Machine Learning Engineer, Assistance Engineering
Airbnb is hiring a Machine Learning Engineer, Assistance Engineering. Level rates it ; you can apply on Airbnb.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this machine learning engineer role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include RAG, fine tuning and AI evaluation.
- Level classifies it as a mid-level role.
- Level lists 211 other open roles at Airbnb.
AI in this role
Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.
Your Location:
This position is CHINA BASED. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. Your recruiter will inform you what cities you are able to work from depending on your personal legal working identity and Airbnb internal policies.
The Community You Will Join:
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are at the heart of the Airbnb product. From Trust to Payments, and from Customer Service to Marketing we rely on ML to ensure that guests and hosts have the best possible experience with Airbnb.
The Community Support Products (CSP) Machine Learning team is the core team responsible for driving CSxAI (Customer Support x Artificial Intelligence) initiatives by adopting the Generative AI technologies to enable an intelligent, scalable and exceptional service experience. The team develops and enhances various AI models, ML services and tools including LLM fine-tuning and optimization, RAG/Search, LLM evaluation and testing automation, feedback-based learning and guardrail for a wide range of applications in Airbnb.
The richness of Airbnb's data, the complexity of its marketplace and the variety innate in our product mean that we need to operate at the state of the art of AI practice. We are committed to investing in long term innovation to solve the complex problems we face, and to do that we need the very best experts in ML and AI to join us.
The Difference You Will Make:
We believe our current customer experiences in these domains are only scratching the surface of the innovations that are possible, and that science is at the heart of delivering a step-function change for our Guest and and Host on Airbnb.
You will build and leverage cutting edge AI technologies to transform Airbnb’s customer service by delivering personalized, easy-to-use and proactive customer service experience.
Many of the initiatives you’ll tackle are in their early conceptual stages. You will have the opportunity to shape these ideas from inception to production, turning visionary concepts into impactful realities.
A Typical Day:
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Envision, champion, and support the development of novel ML systems, product integrations, and performance optimizations to solve real-world problems
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Work cross-functionally with product, design, and other engineering counterparts to design and build efficient AI solutions for Airbnb CS products
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Learn and share the latest AI/ML technologies with the team across regions( China and the US).
Your Expertise:
- PhD/Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience
- 2-4 years of ML engineering experience, with ownership responsibility over large-scale software systems.
- Background in the design and development of AI and ML systems and services, and a deep passion for building efficient and scalable ML-powered products
- Experience with LLM driven chatbot and Agentic AI products would be a big plus
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to work well within a team and with teams across the engineering, product & design organizations
- Fluency in both English and Mandarin is essential.
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.
Reasonable Accommodations: We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.
A Note on Recruiting Scams: Scammers sometimes pose as Airbnb recruiters to get money or personal information from candidates. A few things that will always be true for Airbnb’s hiring process: our open roles are posted on Airbnb’s Career’s Page at careers.airbnb.com, and our recruiters correspond only from @airbnb.com or @ext.airbnb.com email addresses. Our recruiters will never ask for your Social Security number, bank account details, passport, or payment app information while you are interviewing. We’ll also never ask you to pay a fee, send money, deposit or cash a check, or purchase work-related equipment (such as a company laptop) during the interview process. We encourage candidates to remain vigilant of these recruiting scams and not share sensitive information if you do not believe an individual is actually affiliated with Airbnb.
How we rate this
Machine Learning Engineer, Assistance Engineering at Airbnb rates 86 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in machine learning engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- Typical machine learning engineer job
- $200k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical machine learning engineer figure when pay comes up. See machine learning engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
- Walk me through fine-tuning a model: what data did you use, and how did you check the result?
- How do you decide that one model's output is better than another's for a given task?
- How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?
- Tell me about a time a model underperformed in production. How did you find out, and what did you change?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: RAG, Fine-tuning, and AI Evaluation. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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