Senior Staff Technical Program Manager, Search Relevance & Personalization

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’s mission is to create a world where people can Belong Anywhere. As we grow to achieve that mission, we’re looking to add a technical, hands-on, and mission-driven Technical Program Manager (TPM) for the Infrastructure team. This person will partner with our engineering & product teams to build/enhance data-driven decision making  across multiple areas in Airbnb. They will partner closely with senior ICs and engineering directors across Airbnb on processes, strategy and execution. 

To help us achieve this mission, we are seeking a technical, hands-on, and mission-driven Senior Staff Technical Program Manager (TPM) to lead Search Relevance & Personalization initiatives. In this role, you will collaborate closely with the Machine Learning (ML) engineers, infrastructure engineers and product managers  from across Airbnb to develop holistic solutions that ensure a vibrant and equitable marketplace. 

The Search Relevance & Personalization team powers ranking and recommendations across the Airbnb platform, including: Search Ranking for Stays, Experiences, Services, Home Page Recommendations, Search Bar AutoSuggest and Autocomplete, Marketing Technology, and many more coming. The team also creates the fabric for personalization (platform and models invoked) used both on and off platform for Airbnb. We collaborate with many teams including Search Infrastructure, Guest and Host Experiences, MDX, Marketing, CS, and Trust, and many more.

We are looking for a candidate with a robust technical background who deeply understands the problem space, drives requirements, and leverages their AI/ML expertise to resolve strategic challenges that align with Airbnb’s larger goals.

The Difference You Will Make:

You will play a crucial role in tackling projects that power search and recommendations across the entire Airbnb platform—directly influencing how guests and hosts connect in meaningful ways. Success in this role requires a strong sense of ownership, coupled with the ability to think critically and strategically while managing relationships with cross-functional stakeholders.

A Typical Day: 

• Shape and influence the technical direction of projects, ensuring we meet stakeholder needs while maintaining high-quality standards. Rapidly prototype and validate project ideas through iterative development cycles, adapting as necessary based on insights and data.
• Balance broad, outcome-driven thinking with attention to critical details, exercising sound judgment to prioritize where deep focus is necessary to ensure successful execution.
• Define and secure stakeholder alignment on clear, measurable success criteria to accelerate AI initiatives. Regularly assess risks and opportunities, and devise proactive mitigation strategies to maintain momentum and project success.
• Maintain transparent and effective communication channels to keep stakeholders informed of progress, developments, and challenges.
• Expertly present outcomes and updates to senior leadership, clearly and comprehensively articulating trade-offs, risks, and emerging opportunities.

Your Expertise:

• At least 13 years of work experience, with at least 11 years as a TPM or relevant experience 
• Demonstrated experience in search relevance, natural language search, and recommendation systems. Experience with applying GenAI/LLM technologies on search is a plus.
• Demonstrated ability to work through ambiguity to detailed solutions. You can take a vague problem, crisply frame the challenge, identify a path forward, and drive an initiative over the finish-line.
• Self-motivated, proactive and proven ability to adapt well and work with teams having different operating cadences.
• Sound business judgment, a proven ability to influence others, strong analytical skills, and a track record of taking ownership, leading data driven analyses, and influencing results
• Experience  with ML models, LLMs, LRMs, feature development, model testing and resource management to support the development of AI-powered product experiences.
• Familiar with A/B testing, incremental delivery and deployment.
• Ability to ramp up quickly and learn new technologies with minimal lag time.
• Excellent written and oral business communication and people skills, with the ability to influence sta