Senior Data Scientist - Algorithms, AirCover at Airbnb

Airbnb was established in 2007 when two Hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home. Since then, it has grown exponentially to over 4 million Hosts who have welcomed more than 1 billion guest arrivals in virtually every country worldwide. Every day, Hosts offer unique stays and experiences, enabling guests to connect with communities in the most authentic way possible.

The Community You Will Join

Airbnb is a mission-driven company dedicated to creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere. While travel can be rewarding, it doesn't always go as planned. AirCover aims to provide peace of mind from booking through the entire trip. As a Data Scientist working on AirCover, you will collaborate with a strong team of engineers, product managers, designers, and operations specialists to build scalable and robust systems. These systems detect, mediate, and solve issues across a broad spectrum and optimize personalized presentations of our products.

The Difference You Will Make

We are seeking a machine learning expert to join the AirCover Data Science team. In this role, you will have the opportunity to make a direct impact by designing scalable scientific solutions for various problems, including:

• Detecting intents across various entry points using unstructured data through machine learning, NLP, or computer vision methods.
• Optimizing the presentation of AirCover products via thoughtful user segmentation and personalization.
• Summarizing customer journeys and conversations with foundational or finely tuned large language models (LLM) to understand user pain points.
• Recommending the right product at the right time to provide peace of mind for customers.

A Typical Day

• Identify high-impact business opportunities through data exploration and model prototyping, translating business problems into scientific formulations.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners, including software engineers, product managers, operations, and research teams, to refine machine learning model requirements, drive scientific decisions, and quantify impact.
• Hands-on development, production, and operation of machine learning models and pipelines at scale, including both batch and real-time use cases, structured and unstructured data.
• Build reusable, high-performing, scalable machine learning models incorporating internal tooling, third-party information, and state-of-the-art innovations.
• Present work internally at monthly meetings to technical, engineering, and product stakeholders, generating excitement about roadmap progress.
• Publish externally and engage with the scientific community to advance Airbnb’s standing.

Your Expertise

• 5+ years of relevant industry experience (e.g., ML scientist, tech lead, junior faculty) and a Master’s degree or Ph.D. in relevant fields.
• Hands-on experience with personalization and recommendation problems, proficiency with LLMs or related AI, NLP, CV, UGC/content understanding topics such as deep learning, information retrieval, or knowledge extraction. Examples include BERT, GPT-2/3/4, LLaMA, Mistral.
• Strong fluency in Python and SQL, with experience in TensorFlow, PyTorch, Airflow, and data warehousing.
• Deep understanding of the Machine Learning lifecycle best practices, including training/serving, feature engineering, feature/model selection, labeling, A/B testing, and relevant algorithms and domains.
• Proven ability to communicate clearly and effectively to audiences with varying technical levels; observational causal inference skills are a plus.
• A mix of strong intellectual curiosity with pragmatism and engagement with the technical community, including publications or presentations in recognized journals or conferences.
• Product-oriented mindset focusing on applying solutions while considering user experience.

Your Location

This position is eligible for remote work within the United States. However, you must reside in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. You may occasionally be required to work at an Airbnb office or attend offsite meetings. Check the up-to-date list of excluded states . This list is constantly evolving, so please verify if your state is on the exclusion list.

Our Commitment to Inclusion & Belonging

At Airbnb, we believe that a diverse talent pool fosters innovation and engagement. We encourage all qualified individuals to apply. We aim to provide a disability-inclusive application and interview process. If you require reasonable accommodation to submit an application, please contact us at