Company profile
Airbnb
Airbnb operates the world's largest peer-to-peer short-term rental marketplace, with Experiences and Services as growth bets. Engineering interviews are known for a strong product-sense bar even for backend roles, plus a culture-fit round explicitly checking alignment with the company's design-led values.
The Airbnb interview process
Airbnb interviews carry a strong product-sense bar even for backend roles, and a dedicated culture round checks alignment with the company's design-led values. Coding and system design are standard, but the round that surprises people is the explicit values interview, which is treated as a real gate.
- 1
Recruiter screen
Background and fit.
- 2
Technical screen
Coding with attention to clarity and product context.
- 3
System design
Scalable design, often with a product framing.
- 4
Core values
Alignment with the company's mission and design-led culture.
What Airbnb is looking for
What they value
- Connecting technical choices to user experience
- Genuine alignment with the mission, not rehearsed lines
- Thoughtfulness about edge cases that affect real guests
Culture signals in the loop
- Belong-anywhere mission and host empathy
- Design taste even in non-design roles
- Caring about the experience, not just the system
Questions and process by role
Airbnb hires across several engineering and product functions, and the loop shifts with each one. Open a role for the reported questions, the round-by-round focus, and a salary band for that function.
- Frontend engineer
Frontend engineer interview questions and process at Airbnb.
engineering - Backend engineer
Backend engineer interview questions and process at Airbnb.
engineering - Database engineer
Database engineer interview questions and process at Airbnb.
engineering - Developer relations engineer
Developer relations engineer interview questions and process at Airbnb.
engineering - Elixir engineer
Elixir engineer interview questions and process at Airbnb.
engineering - Embedded engineer
Embedded engineer interview questions and process at Airbnb.
engineering - Engineering manager
Engineering manager interview questions and process at Airbnb.
engineering - Forward-deployed engineer
Forward-deployed engineer interview questions and process at Airbnb.
engineering
Practice Airbnb coding problems
Solve the 6 problems that commonly appear in Airbnb coding interviews in a real in-browser editor, and run your solution against the test cases. JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, C, and C++. Free, no sign-up.
Salary signal
Approximate senior median pay for Airbnb's core roles, anchored to San Francisco and modeled from BLS, ONS, and Levels.fyi reference medians. These are market bands for the role and city, not Airbnb offers. Open a role for the full city-by-city table.
Employee reviews
Airbnb holds a 4.2 Glassdoor rating. External review scores are directional signals. Treat them as context alongside the specific team, location, level, and hiring manager you are interviewing with.
Glassdoor 4.2