Airbnb’s careers FAQ says the company aims to respond to applications within three to four weeks, and that its team reviews around 15,000 applications every month. Airbnb’s 2025 10-K, meanwhile, reported about 8,200 employees at the end of the year.
Put those two numbers side by side. At that pace, a company of roughly 8,000 people receives more than 20 times its own headcount in applications every year. That’s the case for trying to find the hiring manager at Airbnb rather than relying on the application alone. It’s also the reason the search is more manageable than at most big tech companies: there just aren’t that many teams.
A small company with a big brand
Airbnb’s headcount is a fraction of Google’s, Meta’s or Microsoft’s. The 10-K also notes that Airbnb relied on roughly 13,000 third-party workers, as of the end of 2025, to handle most of its community support contacts. Those people aren’t Airbnb employees, so the 8,200 figure is mostly product, engineering, design, data, marketing, operations and corporate functions.
Smaller company, fewer teams, fewer managers. A focused search can get you to the right two or three people faster than at almost any other big consumer tech company.
How Airbnb’s interview process works
Airbnb’s careers site describes the interview process as rigorous and says candidates are matched with multiple people on the current team. Depending on the position, it can involve a test, a video, or an event.
Prep guides from firms like Exponent and Interview Query fill in the common structure: a recruiter screen, a technical challenge or hiring manager screen, then a final round. The distinctive part is the core values interviews, usually conducted by trained Airbnb employees from outside the hiring team, who assess you against the company’s published values. Airbnb’s careers site lists them as Be a Host, Embrace the Adventure, and Be a Cereal Entrepreneur.
The structure has a familiar shape. The hiring manager is close to the role and often screens you early. The core values interviewers are independent of the team by design. Outreach can get you in front of the first. Your stories have to carry you through the second.
Airbnb’s structure
Airbnb’s CEO has said publicly, in widely covered 2023 interviews, that the company reorganized into a more functional, centrally coordinated structure and reshaped its traditional product management function. You don’t need the full history. The practical implication is that teams at Airbnb tend to be organized by discipline and product surface, with cross-functional groups working on the guest and host experiences, payments, trust and safety, search and discovery, and platform infrastructure.
Postings usually name the area: “Guest & Host,” “Payments,” “Trust,” “Search,” “Messaging,” “Tech Foundations,” and so on. That’s your search anchor.
Location is a weaker filter at Airbnb than elsewhere. Since 2022, Airbnb’s “live and work anywhere” policy has let many employees work remotely within their country, so a posting may list a country rather than a city. San Francisco is the headquarters, and many teams still cluster there.
How to find the hiring manager at Airbnb
- Pull the team and function from the posting. “Engineering Manager, Guest & Host” or “Senior Software Engineer, Payments” tells you most of what you need.
- Search the Airbnb Tech Blog. Airbnb engineers and data scientists publish detailed, named posts about the systems they build. If the posting mentions a domain such as search ranking, pricing, payments, or experimentation, search the blog for it.
- Check Airbnb’s open-source work and conference talks. Airbnb has a long history of open-source projects and engineering talks. Maintainers and speakers are often senior engineers or managers.
- Search LinkedIn. Look for Airbnb employees with manager, senior manager, or director titles in the posting’s area. Because location is loose, filter by function and team keywords instead.
- Shortlist two or three people. At Airbnb’s size, a manager on an adjacent team almost always knows who owns the req.
A worked example
Picture a hypothetical posting: “Senior Software Engineer, Payments,” listed as remote-eligible in the United States.
Location won’t help much, so lean on the team name. Search the Airbnb Tech Blog for payments posts. Airbnb has written about the systems behind its payments platform, and those authors are your first leads.
Then LinkedIn: search for Airbnb engineering managers with “Payments” in their title or headline, without a location filter. Check tenure, since someone who has managed payments engineering for a while is more likely to own the req than someone new to the team.
Cross the two lists and you’ll typically have two or three names. At a company of Airbnb’s size, that’s often most of the payments engineering management.
Why reaching the manager matters here
That 15,000-a-month figure from Airbnb’s own careers page is the whole argument. Even with the team reviewing applications diligently, an application that looks merely qualified has a lot of company.
Ashby’s Talent Trends Report, covering more than 100 million applications across its customers, found the average hire took more than 300 applications through 2025, and that referred candidates passed initial screens at 52% versus 35% overall. Airbnb isn’t in Ashby’s data, but the same dynamic applies: someone inside with a reason to look at your application changes your odds.
For a much larger company where the hiring manager also owns the call, see how to find the hiring manager at Netflix.
What to say to an Airbnb manager
Airbnb’s culture is built around hospitality and design. Your message should be warm, specific, and well crafted. A wall of text reads as the opposite of Airbnb’s design sensibility.
- Name the role and include the posting link or ID.
- Reference specific work: a Tech Blog post, a product launch, a design or research write-up.
- Offer one concrete result from your own work, ideally with the user or host impact clear.
- Ask for something small.
An example, written for illustration:
Hi [name], I’m applying for the Senior Data Scientist role on Search. Your team’s Tech Blog post on [ranking topic] was the best explanation I’ve read of balancing guest relevance against host fairness. At [company] I led an experiment that changed how we ranked new sellers, which raised their first-month bookings by 14% with no drop in buyer conversion. I’d love 15 minutes to hear what your team is exploring.
Preparing for the conversation, and for core values
If an Airbnb manager replies, expect a conversation that blends role fit with culture. Prepare:
- One project story with clear user impact. Airbnb thinks about both sides of its marketplace, guests and hosts, so show that you consider more than one stakeholder.
- A view on the product area, based on public information like recent launches, release announcements and Tech Blog posts.
- Questions about the team’s priorities, how it works with design and marketing, and what the manager would want a new hire to own.
Separately, prepare for the core values interviews. For each value Airbnb lists (Be a Host, Embrace the Adventure, Be a Cereal Entrepreneur), have at least one specific story where you acted that way: what you did and what happened. Prep guides consistently note that these interviews are run by people outside the hiring team, and that vague answers don’t hold up.
Follow-up and timing
Airbnb’s FAQ says it aims to respond to applications within three to four weeks. That gives you a natural timeline: apply, reach out to the manager within a few days, and follow up once about a week later if you haven’t heard back. If three or four weeks pass with no response to the application either, a short note asking about status is reasonable.
Mistakes to avoid
Talking about your favorite stay. Every applicant has one. It doesn’t tell a manager anything about your work.
Ignoring the core values interviews. Outreach doesn’t touch them. Prepare real stories that show each value through specific actions.
Messaging the CEO. Airbnb’s CEO is famously hands-on, which makes this tempting. Individual reqs are owned by team managers.
Assuming location filters work. With remote-friendly policies, many Airbnb employees list a country or region. Search by team and function.
The bottom line
Airbnb is small, popular, and organized by product surface. That means a big pile of applications for each role, and a short list of managers who own them. To find the hiring manager at Airbnb, start with the posting’s team name, the Tech Blog and Airbnb’s open-source and conference work, and send a warm, specific, well-written message. Then prepare for core values interviews that no amount of outreach will help you skip.
That research is the part that eats your evenings. angld.AI automates it: paste an Airbnb job posting, and it identifies the likely decision maker, researches their public work, and drafts a personalized outreach message in about 60 seconds.
