Senior Staff Backend Software Engineer, GraphQL

The Community You Will Join:

• Viaduct is a unified data access layer connecting most of Airbnb’s online data. More than 70% of Airbnb’s API traffic flows through the Viaduct platform. 
• Residing at the center of Airbnb’s tech stack between the user-facing products and backend infrastructure, Viaduct provides a global schema & query system through a GraphQL interface. 
• The Viaduct team is a very tenured and experienced team, setting the best practices and next-gen architecture for Airbnb.
• As part of the Application Platform pillar of Infrastructure, we work closely with partner infra teams (Build Infra, Service Platform, CI/CD, Reliability, Observability, Developer Platform to name a few) as well as product engineers.
• We treat our platform as a product and follow the principles of good Platform Engineering
• Viaduct has been running in production for over six years and the team has gained a lot of experience in operating a GraphQL platform at scale. These insights informed the major rewrite - called Viaduct Modern - which we’re in the process of launching and continue to evolve. You will join the effort to create the best developer experience of hundreds of engineers at Airbnb using our revolutionary GraphQL platform. 
• Viaduct has been released as an Open Source project. Your contributions to the Viaduct platform will not only serve Airbnb-internal developers, but also any member of the Open Source community who chooses to adopt Viaduct.

The Difference You Will Make:

• Orchestrate and influence multiple technical tracks on the team from the core query engine and performance infrastructure to API ergonomics and reliability tooling, ensuring they interlock into a coherent, world-class developer platform.
• Champion the evolution of Viaduct’s global GraphQL schema: guide the multi-partner steering committee, strengthen governance processes, and drive a long-term vision that scales with Airbnb’s growing product surface and data-as-a-service strategy. 
• Act as a multiplier for senior talent on the team: mentor teammates, cultivate technical leadership across Viaduct sub-teams, and foster an environment where every engineer can drive impactful initiatives.
• Serve as a key technical voice partnering with product, infrastructure, and leadership stakeholders to align Viaduct’s roadmap with Airbnb’s strategic objectives.
• Shape how hundreds of engineers and external open-source adopters build, ship, and operate GraphQL services by advancing Viaduct Modern and defining the next wave of capabilities.

A Typical Day: 

• Dive deep into Viaduct’s engine, API layer, build system and performance tooling, identifying cross-cutting opportunities to raise reliability, efficiency, and developer delight.
• Pair with teammates to untangle complex challenges, providing architectural guidance while amplifying their ownership and growth.
• Facilitate the Viaduct Schema Steering Committee: set agendas, arbitrate proposals, and ensure decisions reflect diverse product needs and long-term maintainability across many systems and use cases. 
• Embrace and be a role model for an AI-first engineering approach, using LLM-powered agents to generate and iterate on code while you focus on problem-solving, system design, and quality oversight.
• Partner with tenant teams to troubleshoot production issues, design self-service APIs, and evangelize GraphQL best practices through docs, talks, and office hours.