Senior Data Scientist, Trust - Algorithms

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:

Trust is at the heart of every Airbnb experience, with our aim being to establish ourselves as the most trusted platform globally. The Trust team is responsible for protecting our community and platform from fraud while also ensuring our hosts, guests, homes, and experiences meet our high standards.

The Difference You Will Make:

As a Data Scientist working on the Content Integrity team, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with a strong team of engineers, product managers, designers and operational partners as you drive ideation, scoping, iteration, and execution of data-driven modeling/ML solutions. The challenges you will tackle range across a wide-range of organizational opportunities, from amplifying payment experiences, driving improved business outcomes, and bolstering fraud detection capabilities.

A Typical Day: 

• Build machine learning models to detect high risk activities, develop data mastery to uncover learnings, and formulate structured frameworks to classify and interpret our users’ behavior
• Work cross functionally with operations and product teams to define and collect labels for model training, optimize effectiveness of manual review, and build self-satisfiable verifications that scale.
• Develop measurement strategies to test new product features that deter and mitigate risk, while adhering to ethical guidelines
• Apply and experiment with state-of-the-art innovations to uplevel Airbnb status-quo approaches to technical problems
• Regularly present work internally to technical, engineering and product stakeholders to iterate and generate excitement on roadmap progress
• Publish externally and engage with the scientific community to advance Airbnb’s standing
• Devise optimization models to make optimal business decisions while minimizing risk
• Utilize Deep Learning techniques for advanced feature engineering and model building, e.g., how to model for user behaviors sequences, or how can we detect anomalies effectively

Your Expertise:

• Advanced degree in a quantitative field. PhD is a plus.
• 4+ years of relevant industry and/or academic experience developing scientific frameworks, building machine learning models, and implementing advanced experimentation techniques (e.g. ML scientist, tech lead, junior faculty) 
• Strong fluency in Python for hands-on IC work and advanced data analysis in SQL at scale
• Deep understanding of Machine Learning best practices (eg. training/serving skew minimization, feature engineering, feature/model selection), algorithms (eg. gradient boosted trees, neural networks/deep learning, optimization) and domains (eg. natural language processing, computer vision, personalization and recommendation, anomaly detection).
• Experience in NLP and sequence modeling is a plus. 
• Experience working within the trust and/or fraud domain is a plus. 
• Strong team player who thrives on collaboration and enjoys solving problems alongside others. You value diverse perspectives, communicate proactively, and believe the best solutions are built together—not in isolation.
• Comfortable collaborating with software engineers to understand complex systems and abstracted logs, and working closely with other cross functional partners such as product, policy, and analytics
• Proven ability to create and drive technical and impactful roadmaps for the business, and lead seamless execution of it while managing ambiguity and adapting as necessary.
• Proven ability to communicate clearly and effectively to cross functional partners of varying technical levels.
• Industry experience building end-to-end Machine Learning systems and/or building and productionizing Machine Learning models is a plus. 

Your Location:

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. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inf