Engineering Manager, Payments

About the role

This Engineering Manager position at Airbnb focuses on the Payments team, which is central to the company's global operations. The team builds and maintains an in-house payments platform that handles global markets, various currencies, and diverse payment methods. This platform must also comply with regulatory environments and integrate with external partners, ensuring reliable and compliant payment experiences for Airbnb's community.

The role requires close collaboration with multiple internal teams including Product, Design, Data Science, Finance, Legal, Compliance, and Operations. Success in this position means establishing a clear technical vision, architecting and launching robust solutions, and influencing cross-functional partners to deliver high-quality products. The manager will lead technical initiatives, align them with business outcomes, and prioritize engineering system requirements to maximize impact.

A key aspect of this role is nurturing a culture of technical quality and engineering excellence, from initial design through code review and production deployment. The manager is also responsible for empowering individual contributors to expand their influence beyond their immediate tasks, creating opportunities for them to lead broader technical initiatives. This includes retaining, growing, and hiring a diverse team of high-performing engineers capable of transforming ambitious product concepts into reality.

The base pay for this position is between $212,000 and $265,000 USD, with additional compensation potentially including bonuses, equity, benefits, and travel credits.

Skills that matter here

• managing an engineering team: The role requires 3-5+ years of experience leading engineering teams, focusing on fostering growth and ensuring high performance.
• software development industry experience: Candidates should have 9+ years of relevant experience in fast-paced tech environments, contributing to the development of software solutions.
• building large-scale backend systems: Expertise in developing robust and scalable backend infrastructure is crucial for managing Airbnb's payment platform.
• user facing features: Experience in creating user-facing features is necessary to ensure the payment systems provide intuitive and effective experiences for guests and hosts.
• communication and collaboration skills: Strong abilities in communication and collaboration are essential for influencing cross-functional partners and aligning technical efforts with business goals.
• leading and shipping large initiatives: The manager must have a proven track record of leading significant projects with high business impact from conception to delivery.

Who this role suits

• A leader who can define long-term technical strategies and guide their implementation.
• Someone adept at collaborating with diverse teams and influencing decisions across different stakeholders.
• An individual committed to fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• A manager who prioritizes team growth, diversity, and the development of individual contributors.

From the employer

As an Engineering Manager on Payments, you will:

• Collaborate with other senior leaders to define and drive long-term technical strategy and architecture that enables the company’s future vision.
• Establish a technical vision and lead efforts to architect, build, and launch reliable, performant, and scalable solutions.
• Collaborate with and influence cross-functional partners to design and deliver high-quality products.
• Lead team technical initiatives, and work cross-functionally to identify opportunities for business impact, refine, and prioritize requirements for engineering systems.
• Lead conversations that align technical efforts with business outcomes and product priorities.
• Nurture a culture of technical quality and engineering excellence from design, through code review, to production.
• Enable and empower ICs to grow their impact beyond individual contributions, creating opportunities for them to lead technical initiatives that span across platforms and organizations.
• Retain, grow and hire a team of high-performing engineers.
• Build a strong and diverse team capable of turning ambitious product visions into a polished reality.

Your Expertise:

• 3-5+ years of hands-on experience managing an engineering team and 9+ years of relevant software development industry experience in a fast paced tech environment.
• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree, preferably in CS, or equivalent experience.
• Strong expertise in building large-scale backend systems and experience in user facing features.
• Strong product and design instinct, previous proven experience building delightfully designed experiences.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Proven experience working with many engineering teams and cross functional partners.
• Flexible in leadership style, can adapt to a variety of ways of working depending on the situation.
• Experience leading and shipping large initiatives with high business impact.
• Creating a strong culture of operational excellence with focus on raising the bar for quality, reliability and availability.
• Good judgment in making tradeoffs to balance short-term business needs with long-term technical quality.
• Strong communication skill and ability to influence decisions from a wide variety of stakeholders.
• Experience fostering an inclusive and engaging team environment.
• Able to identify, retain, grow and acquire critical talent.
• Strong commitment to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within teams.

How We'll Take Care of You:

• Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands.
• The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.
• This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.
• Pay Range $212,000 — $265,000 USD.