Staff Technical Program Manager, China outbound

Full Time
11 months ago

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 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.

The Community You Will Join:

Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. As we grow to achieve this mission, we’re looking to add a seasoned technical, hands-on, and mission-driven Technical Program Manager (TPM) to the China Outbound team. This person will drive all engineering efforts across the China Outbound engineering teams.

China Outbound team is based in Beijing, China. We are responsible for the end-to-end guest experience of Chinese guests traveling outbound. China is the world's largest, and fastest growing, outbound travel market. We want to help the new audience of Chinese millennial travelers explore the world through our local experiences, personable hosts, and unique accommodations.

The Difference You Will Make:

TPMs at Airbnb work on a variety of complex projects/ programs that touch multiple product surfaces, services, functions and teams, and hence are required to keep the big picture in focus while being able to dive into the details, working through unique challenges. It is a highly leveraged role that aims to improve the quality and velocity of work across cross-functional teams by acting as a “force multiplier”. This includes managing project schedules, identifying risks, discussing the technical trade-offs with engineers, and maintaining clear communications across multiple stakeholder groups across the organization. They make work repeatable by creating and improving processes where applicable. In short, they get things done by bringing clarity out of chaos, diving into the details, and communicating clearly and in a timely manner. They're good at building relationships, motivating others with vision, and persuading with data.

A Typical Day: 

  • Develop program scope and objectives, collaborate with all relevant stakeholders, ensure technical feasibility and drive projects end-to-end
  • Aligning on staffing, priorities and technical dependencies within China Outbound and cross-functional teams.
  • Manage Technical Design diligence process for large programs aligning design backlog w/ project plan, scheduling reviews and pre-reviews, engaging the right stakeholders across teams, and managing meeting quality and efficiency.
  • Manage effective communications to leadership and across teams on key decisions, status, and risks to ensure accountability and timeline management.
  • Understand best practices, drive for process improvements, and find new ways of operating, with a focus on simplification and productivity.
  • Provide visibility into key performance indicators so leaders are aware of risks and opportunities.
  • In this role, you will be expected to work independently with stakeholders and cross-functional leadership with little supervision from management. 

Your Expertise:

  • Experience developing processes where few exist, and demonstrated flexibility to get things done.
  • Demonstrated ability to work through ambiguity to detailed solutions. You can take a vague problem, crisply frame the challenge, identify a path forward, and drive an initiative over the finish-line.
  • Self-motivated, proactive and proven ability to adapt well and work with teams having different operating cadences.
  • Detail-oriented and able to understand the bigger picture by using your technical expertise and problem solving abilities to prioritize and manage blocking issues.
  • Experience working in a highly cross-functional environment where communication with multiple groups is imperative.
  • Ability to ramp up quickly and learn new technologies with minimal lag time.
  • Excellent written and oral business communication and people skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders.
  • Exhibit knowledge of Asana, Jira, Airtable or other equivalent task management tooling.
  • BA/BS degree,10+ years of experience in software development industry with at least 7 years as a TPM

Your Location

This position is China - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. Your recruiter will inform you what cities you are able to work from depending on your personal legal working identity and Airbnb internal policies.