Product Design Engineer, Employee Experience AI (contract)

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two Hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 4 million Hosts who have welcomed more than 1 billion guest arrivals in more than 100, 000 cities and towns located in 220+ countries and regions across the globe. Every day, Hosts offer unique stays and one-of-a-kind activities that make it possible for guests to experience the world in a more authentic, connected way. Airbnb was born with a creative spirit, and it’s one of the most defining parts of our culture. We use our curiosity and imagination to come up with unconventional solutions. These are the ideas at the core of Airbnb:

• Our community is based on connection and belonging.
• Our creativity allows us to imagine new possibilities for people.
• Our responsibility is to all of our stakeholders.
• It takes a unified team committed to our core values to embody these ideas, and our fast-moving team is committed to leading as a 21st century company.

About The Role The Employee Experience (EX) team at Airbnb is building a suite of AI-powered tools that make work better for employees and managers. We're looking for a Product Design Engineer who builds what they design — someone who thinks in interaction patterns and user flows, can prototype in high fidelity, and is just as particular about the craft of a micro-interaction as they are about the quality of the component underneath it. This is not a graphic design or traditional UX role. The work sits at the intersection of employee experience and AI-native product design, and you'll be working directly in our codebase alongside AI engineers as a peer. That means thinking beyond screens and static flows, into the emerging vocabulary of AI interaction: how do you design for uncertainty, latency, and outputs that aren't fully predictable? If that's the kind of challenge that excites you, this role was written for you. Portfolio required: We want to see a mix of design work and the code or prototypes behind it. What You'll Do: Help define the design language for our AI-native employee tools, building on Airbnb's Design Language System where it fits and establishing new patterns, components, and principles where the demands of employee experience require something distinctly our own. Design and iterate on experiences for AI-powered tools across EX's four signature services: Gathering, Onboarding, Performance Management, and Workforce Planning Design, prototype, and productize AI-powered experiences across EX's four signature services (Onboarding, Gathering, Performance Management, etc.), using Figma, Claude Code, and our broader toolset Hands-on experience designing for agentic or AI-native interfaces, including multi-step task flows, proactive systems, and experiences where the user is collaborating with AI across input types (text, voice, and ambient) as products evolve beyond traditional screen-based flows Familiarity with how LLM-based systems actually behave – including orchestration patterns, model handoff, and how to design meaningful user control when the system is acting on someone's behalf Partner with AI engineers and product managers on EX's internal production platform (Hyperloop), bridging design intent and technical execution through the full build cycle Conduct lightweight usability testing with Airbnb employees and managers to validate and iterate on design decisions Contribute to the EX AI knowledge base by ensuring tool documentation and user-facing content is clear, well-organized, and visually consistent About The Role The Employee Experience (EX) team at Airbnb is building a suite of AI-powered tools that make work better for employees and managers. We're looking for a Product Design Engineer who builds what they design — someone who thinks in interaction patterns and user flows, can prototype in high fidelity, and is just as particular about the craft of a micro-interaction as they are about the quality of the component underneath it. This is not a graphic design or traditional UX role. The work sits at the intersection of employee experience and AI-native product design, and you'll be working directly in our codebase alongside AI engineers as a peer. That means thinking beyond screens and static flows, into the emerging vocabulary of AI interaction: how do you design for uncertainty, latency, and outputs that aren't fully predictable? If that's the kind of challenge that excites you, this role was written for you. Portfolio required: We want to see a mix of design work and the code or prototypes behind it. What You'll Do: Help define the design language for our AI-native employee tools, building on Airbnb's Design Language System where it fits and establishing new patterns, components, and principles where the demands of employee experience require something distinctly our own. Design and iterate on experiences for AI-powered tools across EX's four signature services: Gathering, Onboarding, Performance Management, and Workforce Planning Design, prototype, and productize AI-powered experiences across EX's four signature services (Onboarding, Gathering, Performance Management, etc.), using Figma, Claude Code, and our broader toolset Hands-on experience designing for agentic or AI-native interfaces, including multi-step task flows, proactive systems, and experiences where the user is collaborating with AI across input types (text, voice, and ambient) as products evolve beyond traditional screen-based flows Familiarity with how LLM-based systems actually behave – including orchestration patterns, model handoff, and how to design meaningful user control when the system is acting on someone's behalf Partner with AI engineers and product managers on EX's internal production platform (Hyperloop), bridging design intent and technical execution through the full build cycle Conduct lightweight usability testing with Airbnb employees and managers to validate and iterate on design decisions Contribute to the EX AI knowledge base by ensuring tool documentation and user-facing content is clear, well-organized, and visually consistent What We're Looking For 5+ years of UX/UI, product design, design engineering, or hybrid design/frontend role, with a portfolio that includes web application work Expertise with Figma, specifically experience designing, modifying, and maintaining component specs and systems Strong React proficiency and working knowledge of HTML and CSS; you should be comfortable working directly in a codebase, contributing to pull requests, and collaborating with engineers as a technical peer Experience designing AI-native or conversational interfaces, with a solid understanding of the design challenges unique to LLM-powered products: streaming responses, ambiguous outputs, multi-turn flows, and building trust with users when the system is inherently dynamic; experience with the Claude API or similar is a strong plus Strong instincts around information architecture and emerging AI interaction patterns, informed by hands-on experience with tools like the Google AI Suite, Claude Enterprise, Glean, or similar Experience designing for non-technical end users in an enterprise or internal tools context, with the craft of consumer-grade products Comfort moving fast with incomplete information, our tools and user needs are evolving and your designs will too

Nice to Have

Prior experience designing a formal design system, not just consuming or contributing to it Experience with HR tech, people operations tools, or workplace experience products Experience working in or alongside a platform engineering team What Success Looks Like In six months, you'll have meaningly contributed to two production-ready EX tools and a series of prototypes and features that move our product roadmap forward. You'll have co-authored a design language for AI-native employee experiences – the components, interaction patterns, and principles – that give our tools a coherent identity and a playbook others can build on. And you'll have raised the bar for what design-led AI experiences can feel like inside Airbnb. Belonging & Accommodations: Airbnb is committed to working with the best and brightest people from the broadest talent pool possible. We believe a diversity of ideas fosters innovation and engagement, and allows us to attract the best people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply. If you need assistance, or reasonable accommodation during the application and recruiting process, please connect with your talent sourcing partner. Pay Rate Range: $120-$140/hr Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, 401K Apply tot his job Apply To this Job