The Community You Will Join:

As Tech Lead Manager within Airbnb’s BizTech Systems team, you will lead a team dedicated to solving application support challenges and implementing scalable infrastructure solutions. The team fosters growth, inclusivity, collaboration, and professional development in alignment with Airbnb values.

The Difference You Will Make:

• Team Leadership: Lead a team of 4 engineers, establishing workflows like on-call rotations and service catalogs while fostering an innovative and psychologically safe environment.
• Scalable Solutions: Deliver durable, scalable infrastructure strategies aligned with organizational objectives.
• Application Ownership: Manage lifecycle processes (patching, upgrades, configurations) for non-core BizTech applications, using tools like Atlassian (JIRA/Confluence) and Tableau.
• Cloud Optimization: Optimize infrastructure on cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), implementing automation via Terraform, Chef, Kubernetes, and Helm.
• Operational Enablement: Develop dashboards, documentation, and observability tools to empower stakeholders and improve application reliability.

A Typical Day:

Your contributions may take a variety of forms, including:

• Conduct team check-ins to ensure alignment on ongoing projects, identify and address roadblocks, and provide actionable feedback to team members.
• Monitor and evaluate performance metrics such as MTTA, MTTR, and improvement targets to ensure the team’s operational efficiency aligns with organizational goals.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Systems Engineering and Operations Engineering, to discuss architectural designs, infrastructure rollouts, and organizational priorities.
• Engage with stakeholders to gather feedback, identify gaps in applications or services, and develop actionable solutions that support Airbnb’s engineering efficiency objectives.
• Mentor engineers by providing guidance on system designs, automation processes, technical problem-solving, and lifecycle management. Offer career progression support and promote the adoption of leadership practices within the team.
• Implement processes for infrastructure migrations and upgrades, addressing retirements of obsolete versions.
• Address and resolve any technical issues or inefficiencies through the use of advanced configuration management tools such as Terraform, Chef, Kubernetes, and Helm. Ensure compliance with security measures, including PKI and Hashicorp Vault.
• Develop and update service catalogs, dashboards, roadmaps, and runbooks to improve system observability and empower stakeholders with accessible technical documentation.
• Brainstorm and implement innovative ideas to enhance application reliability, system scalability, and operational resilience, focusing on sustained improvements such as GP3/Graviton transitions or optimized cloud infrastructure configurations.
• Contribute to strategic planning by evaluating technical roadmaps and objectives, adjusting OKRs as needed to adapt to evolving organizational goals and complex challenges.
• Facilitate constructive debates among team members to explore diverse perspectives and arrive at creative, actionable solutions.
• Execute operational reviews of team processes, including on-call rotations, service catalog updates, and stakeholder training to ensure adherence to high performance standards.

Your Expertise:

• Experience: 9+ years in systems engineering or 6+ years with a Ph.D., emphasizing technical leadership.
• Technical Skills:
• Proficient in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), Terraform, Chef, Kubernetes, Helm.
• Advanced programming capabilities (Python, Go) and CI/CD pipeline expertise.
• Skilled in technical problem-solving, system resilience, and security integrations (PKI, Hashicorp Vault, etc.).
• Leadership Competencies:
• Proven ability to lead teams, drive collaborative practices, and resolve conflicts constructively.
• Strategic planning and alignment of deliverables with stakeholder priorities.