Systems Engineer, Biztech

The Community You Will Join:

As a Systems Engineer within Airbnb's BizTech Solutions Engineering team, you will be a key technical contributor responsible for designing, building, and managing critical corporate infrastructure applications. You'll work alongside a collaborative team that values innovation, technical excellence, and continuous learning while supporting Airbnb's global workforce with scalable infrastructure solutions.

The Difference You Will Make:

• Technical Leadership: Serve as a subject matter expert on various applications and infrastructure components, influencing technical directions that drive organizational impact across multiple teams and stakeholders.
• Infrastructure Excellence: Design and implement highly available applications using containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, GKE, AWS EKS) with service mesh experience (Istio), ensuring robust and scalable solutions.
• Advanced Observability: Implement and maintain sophisticated monitoring and alerting systems using Opensearch and Grafana, focusing on proactive incident prevention and performance optimization.
• Automation & DevOps: Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and ArgoCD, while leveraging core tools like Terraform, Helm, Chef, Ansible, and Git to automate infrastructure provisioning and application management.
• Cross-Platform Expertise: Manage enterprise-scale Linux and Windows operating systems across multiple cloud environments (AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure), implementing security-first solutions and best practices.

A Typical Day:

Your contributions may take a variety of forms, including:

• Monitor application and infrastructure performance proactively by evaluating performance metrics such as MTTA, MTTR, and improvement targets, implementing advanced observability solutions and alerting mechanisms to maintain high SLI/SLO/SLA standards and ensure operational efficiency aligns with organizational goals.
• Research and analyze technical and operational aspects of applications, documenting status through comprehensive runbooks and reports while identifying gaps and implementing strategic fixes for long-term improvements through gap analysis and risk assessments.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Systems Engineering and Operations Engineering, to discuss architectural designs, infrastructure rollouts, and organizational priorities while engaging with stakeholders to gather feedback, identify gaps in applications or services, and develop actionable solutions that support Airbnb's engineering efficiency objectives.
• Design and implement complex technology stacks and highly available applications using containerization technologies, implementing automated deployment processes and ensuring optimal performance across distributed environments while addressing technical issues through advanced configuration management tools such as Terraform, Chef, Kubernetes, and Helm.
• Implement processes for infrastructure migrations and upgrades, addressing retirements of obsolete versions while ensuring compliance with security measures, including PKI and Hashicorp Vault, and participating in on-call rotations for critical services with a security-first mindset.
• Create comprehensive technical documentation, develop support processes and procedures, and provide operational training to facilitate knowledge transfer and support ownership handoff to peers and organizational units while mentoring peers and stakeholders on applications, infrastructure components, and automation practices.
• Execute tactical and strategic technical planning, demonstrating project management capabilities while effectively prioritizing and managing multiple concurrent initiatives, participating in team check-ins to ensure alignment on ongoing projects.
• Engage with technical communities through open source contributions, speaking engagements, or blogging, while coordinating groups of technical individuals to drive broader industry impact and promote innovation within the systems engineering discipline.

Your Expertise:

• Experience: 4-8 years in systems engineering with upper-level individual contributor experience and a BS in Computer Science or related discipline preferred.
• Technical Skills:
• Expert-level proficiency in cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure) with hands-on experience in infrastructure provisioning and management
• Deep working knowledge of Terraform, Helm, Chef, Ansible, and Git as core workflow tools
• Advanced containerization experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and service mesh technologies (Istio)
• Proficient in general-purpose programming languages including Python or Go for automation and tooling development
• Experienced in implementing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and associated tooling (Jenkins, ArgoCD)
• Skilled in advanced observability tools and practices, with preference for Opensearch and Grafana
• Leadership Competencies:
• Proven ability to establish subject matter expertise and influence technical directions for organizational impact
• Experience operating as part of distributed teams using asynchronous workflows and communications with global workforce
• Demonstrated capability in designing complex technology stacks and managing enterprise-scale infrastructure
• Strong emphasis on security-first solution mindset during ticket triage and incident response
• Excellent technical communication skills with ability to create clear documentation and training materials
• Track record of taking ownership, accountability, and responsibility for technical outcomes and team success