Senior Software Engineer, Data Security

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.

The Community You Will Join:

Airbnb is built on trust. The data security team’s mission is to keep the data of millions of users secured and protected in our platform while they explore the world.

The Difference You Will Make:

We are looking for a highly motivated and experienced Senior Software Engineer to join our team. In this pivotal role, you will be responsible for designing and implementing robust controls to identify, secure, and prevent data leakage across our infrastructure in this fast-growing business within the ever-evolving AI landscape. You will collaborate extensively with cross-functional teams to ensure adherence to security best practices and compliance with privacy regulations. This will enable engineers to develop secure features efficiently, rather than encountering impediments. We encourage applications from individuals who excel at securing customer and infrastructure data and developing highly scalable solutions.

A Typical Day: 

• Design and build scalable systems for identifying and protecting sensitive and personal data in various formats (relational and non-relational databases, cloud storage, structured and unstructured data). Enhance existing end-to-end data classification workflows using Regex patterns, and build new data classification and protection methods with advanced machine learning.
• Integrate AI/ML into security practices to enhance contextual awareness and efficiency. For example, utilize LLMs for advanced data discovery, classification, and incident response.
• Implement strong access controls, data minimization, data encryption, and masking to safeguard sensitive data and facilitate responsible AI/ML initiatives.
• Collaborate with Data Governance to design and build complex back-end architecture that is performant and scalable, providing a deep understanding of the risks associated with all Airbnb data, including data ownership, access, and lineage.
• Design and enforce controls to prevent data leakage across various platforms. Automate security enforcement at scale, collaborate with data platform teams and product teams for data governance best practice. 

Other highly relevant work include

• Developing and maintaining a platform to manage third-party vendors integrated with Airbnb, ensuring visibility and protection of user data shared with these vendors.
• Building and scaling data infrastructure using AWS cloud technologies, with a focus on expanding Data Loss Prevention (DLP) coverage across AWS-Corp, Azure, GCP, and OCI.
• Partnering with security teams, privacy engineering, data management, and data governance to maintain compliance with data protection regulations.
• Addressing and resolving data security and infrastructure-related issues.
• Support security incident response.

Check out project examples in technical blogs:

• Personal Data Classification
• Automating Data Protection at Scale, Part 1
• Automating Data Protection at Scale, Part 2
• Automating Data Protection at Scale, Part 3
• Where S Waldo S W 2-  Building Data Discovery And Classification At Scale

Your Expertise:

• 5+ years of software development or job-related work experience.
• Proficiency in one of the programming languages Java, Kotlin, or Python.
• Working knowledge of cloud computing (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Proficiency in one or more of the following domains is required: Generalist Backend, Data Engineering, Machine Learning, or Security Engineering with a focus on development.
• Knowledge of data classification, encryption, and compliance frameworks.
• Experience in a highly collaborative environment, enabling other engineers to develop secure products by default without requiring specialized security expertise.

Nice to Haves

• Machine Learning,