Data Scientist - Inference, Community Support

About Airbnb

Airbnb began in 2007, when two hosts opened their San Francisco home to three guests. Since then, it has expanded into a global community of more than 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals across nearly every country. The platform helps people experience travel and local communities in a more authentic way.

The Team You’ll Join

Airbnb is guided by a mission to create a world where people can belong anywhere. The Community Support team sits at the center of that mission by delivering smooth, high-touch customer support and personalized human assistance for hosts and guests throughout their journey.

In this role, you will work on causal inference problems within Community Support, partnering with engineers, product managers, designers, and operations colleagues to improve fairness, personalization, and the overall support experience for hosts and guests.

Role Impact

This position calls for a data scientist with strong causal inference expertise who can help shape important decisions across AI-enabled products, differentiated service, and operations optimization. You will work closely with the team’s technical lead on initiatives that have a meaningful business and customer impact.

The role suits someone with strong applied reasoning, a focus on measurable impact, and the ability to bring clarity to ambiguous problem areas.

Key Projects

• Develop and run rigorous experiments and quasi-experiments to measure the causal effect of Community Support product launches and support launch decisions with evidence.
• Create causal machine learning models to improve make-good budget allocation and increase business value.
• Analyze causal relationships to understand the longer-term impact of product changes and identify different effects across user groups.
• Provide strategic analysis on the balance between service quality and cost to help leadership improve support for the community.

What You’ll Do

• Design and apply causal inference methods and statistical frameworks to assess intervention impact, evaluate system performance, and spot improvement opportunities.
• Build, assess, and refine causal ML models used in high-stakes decisions, covering the full lifecycle from feature work through production deployment.
• Create methods for evaluating tradeoffs between accuracy, coverage, user experience, and operating cost, then recommend ways to improve overall outcomes.
• Work closely with Product, Design, Engineering, Operations, and Analytics partners to align efforts and support innovation.
• Present findings clearly to leaders and stakeholders so they can make informed, data-backed decisions.
• Contribute strategically to expanding and improving data science capabilities in the domain over the long term.

Experience & Expertise

Qualified candidates should bring at least 2 years of industry experience in a quantitative analysis role along with either a Master’s degree in a quantitative discipline such as statistics, economics, or computer science, or a PhD in a relevant field.

You should have strong grounding in causal inference, experimental design, Bayesian methods, and statistical inference, plus hands-on experience building and deploying statistical or machine learning models in production.

Strong programming ability in Python or R and practical use of SQL are also required, along with the ability to explain complex work to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Success in this role also depends on excellent communication, collaboration, and project management skills, as well as the ability to turn complex analysis into a compelling story that influences action.

Location

This position is remote within the United States. Occasional work from an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites may be required, as agreed with your manager. Even though the role is remote, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Some states are excluded, and the list may change over time. If you are employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will explain which states are eligible.

Inclusion & Accessibility

Airbnb welcomes applicants from a broad range of backgrounds and believes diverse perspectives strengthen innovation and engagement. The company encourages all qualified candidates to apply.

Airbnb also aims to provide an inclusive application and interview process for candidates with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to complete the application process, candidates may contact the company directly with their full name, the role name, and the accommodation required. This outreach is intended only for candidates whose disability prevents them from completing the online application.

Compensation & Benefits

The base salary depends on several factors, including training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, and market conditions. The pay range may change in the future. This role may also qualify for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Pay range: USD 151,000 to USD 175,000 per year.