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Staff Web Automation Engineer, Quality Engineering

Airbnb
RemoteSeniorPosted Jul 17, 2026
PlaywrightCypressJenkinsJavaScriptTypeScriptGitCI/CD

About this role

This Staff Web Automation Engineer role at Airbnb is a high-seniority leadership position focused on redefining quality through AI-driven tooling and robust web automation frameworks. You will be responsible for the entire testing pyramid, leveraging TypeScript and JavaScript to architect testable systems within a massive, global codebase.

Best fit for

This role is best for a veteran automation architect with 8+ years of experience who wants to lead AI-driven quality initiatives and influence the architecture of global-scale web applications.

Skills you need for this role

Detected from the job title, description, and tags.

Automation skills

  • PlaywrightModern cross-browser automation with auto-waits — increasingly the default at product companies.
  • CypressPopular for front-end teams that own their own end-to-end suite.

CI/CD and DevOps

  • JenkinsLegacy CI still widely deployed — expect pipeline-as-code questions.

Programming languages

  • JavaScript / TypeScriptRequired for Playwright, Cypress, and modern front-end test tooling.

Domain & process

  • Performance testing (JMeter / k6 / LoadRunner)Different discipline from functional QA — expect scenario and metrics questions.
  • Test management (Jira / Zephyr / TestRail)Process fluency — writing test cases, tracing coverage, and reporting defects.
  • AI in testingEmployers increasingly ask how you use AI copilots to speed up QA work.

Job description

<div class="content-intro"><p><span style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.</span></p></div><p><strong>The Community You Will Join:&nbsp;</strong></p> <p>The Quality Engineering team helps Airbnb build high-quality software efficiently. We enable Airbnb engineers to build highly testable systems by building and using tools leveraging AI. We own and continuously improve product test cases, automation coverage, test automation tools, environments, frameworks. We navigate Airbnb’s massive codebase identifying weak spots, and help design and implement testable fault-tolerant systems.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>The Difference You Will Make:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Be a leader in Airbnb leveraging AI to redefine and accelerate Quality Engineering</li> <li>As a Staff Automation Engineer, you will help us meet this challenge by building and maintaining automation coverage for features and releases. You will work directly with the product engineering team to develop and maintain our test tools, write and test product code, participate in design reviews to architect testable systems, and guide designs and code to enhance modularity and testability.</li> <li>You are eager to understand complex systems top to bottom and thrive working across technologies and codebases. In addition, you excel at working through ambiguity, concept validation, and implementing best-in-class solutions.</li> <li>As a global company, our mission is to develop and maintain the necessary quality engineering processes that scale to meet the needs of both our external customers and internal teams. We strive to ensure that our product and support workflows deliver a seamless experience for guests, hosts, and support agents.</li> </ul> <p><strong>A Typical Day:&nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li>Leverage AI and tooling to lead the implementation of a test automation strategy, covering the entire testing pyramid (unit, service, integration, and end-to-end testing) to verify feature functionality for customer use cases.</li> <li>Lead building, maintaining, and effective utilization of automated tests, collaborating closely with engineering teams to ensure robust test coverage for features and releases, and actively participating in the continuous improvement of testing processes.</li> <li>Contribute to improving existing automation frameworks to support new functionalities and optimize quality and efficiency.</li> <li>Collaborate with CI/CD team to integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines, ensuring thorough test coverage at every stage of development.</li> <li>Demonstrate excellent troubleshooting abilities, isolate issues, and verify bug fixes. Debug issues found during testing and after release.</li> <li>Be a player of our high-performance team to ensure code quality, commitment to craft and operational excellence</li> <li>Work closely with cross-functional teams, including product management, development, and other QE teams, in a fast-paced environment with short release cycles.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Your Expertise:</strong></p> <ul> <li>8+ years of industry experience in software testing and automation&nbsp;</li> <li>Demonstrable knowledge in at least one programming language (e.g., Typescript, Javascript) and strong scripting skills</li> <li>Strong knowledge of test automation methodologies, tools, and frameworks</li> <li>Strong hands-on experience with web automation frameworks (e.g., Playwright, Cypress)</li> <li>Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Buildkite, Spinnaker, Jenkins) and version control systems (Git)</li> <li>Excellent communication skills towards facilitating interactions with cross-functional teams</li> <li>Expertise developing solutions to ambiguous problems, and integrations across multiple teams with significant impact</li> <li>Bachelor’s degree in computer science/engineering or equivalent</li> </ul> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><strong>Our Commitment To Inclusion &amp; Belonging:</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: </span><a style="color: #000000;" href="mailto:reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com"><span style="font-weight: 400;">reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process.&nbsp;</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;">We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.</span></p>

Job highlights

  • Role: Staff Web Automation Engineer, Quality Engineering
  • Company: Airbnb
  • Location: Remote
  • Experience: Senior
  • Seniority: Senior
  • Posted: Jul 17, 2026

Key skills: Playwright · Cypress · Jenkins · JavaScript · TypeScript · Git · CI/CD

How to prepare for this interview

A 5-step prep plan tailored to this job's stack.

  1. 1Deep dive into Playwright advanced features, specifically focusing on handling shadow DOM and complex network orchestration.
  2. 2Practice system design for testability, specifically how to architect frontend applications to be easily verified by automated scripts.
  3. 3Review AI-driven testing trends and identify specific use cases where AI can optimize test maintenance or data generation.
  4. 4Refine your TypeScript skills, focusing on asynchronous patterns and design patterns for scalable automation frameworks.
  5. 5Prepare examples of leading quality initiatives across multiple teams, emphasizing how you handled technical ambiguity at a Staff level.

Likely interview questions for this role

Tuned to the stack we detected on this job.

  • Q1.How would you utilize AI or LLMs to improve the efficiency of our existing Playwright or Cypress automation suites?
  • Q2.Describe a time you influenced a major architectural change in a product to make it more testable or fault-tolerant.
  • Q3.How do you approach managing test data and environment state for end-to-end tests in a massive distributed system like Airbnb?
  • Q4.When moving from Cypress to Playwright (or vice versa), what technical trade-offs do you consider for a global-scale application?
  • Q5.Explain your strategy for integrating automated performance and reliability checks into a high-frequency Jenkins CI/CD pipeline.

Salary context

Compensation not disclosed.

Airbnb has not disclosed a specific salary range for this remote Brazil-based Staff position in the job posting. Compensation for high-level Staff roles typically reflects the candidate's extensive experience (8+ years) and the leadership responsibilities involved. Because local market rates for remote international roles can vary significantly based on internal equity and local labor laws, we recommend checking our salary guide or using our internal benchmarks to estimate market value for a Staff-level automation engineer. Be prepared to discuss your total compensation expectations, including potential equity components common in high-growth tech firms.

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