Build the backend systems that decide when and how Airbnb notifies guests and hosts

Airbnb's Notifications team (Beijing office, 3 days/week) owns the core systems that deliver notifications to guests and hosts globally — timing, channel selection, and scale. This is a hands-on backend role on JVM-based services in a service-oriented/distributed environment, with on-call and cross-team collaboration in both English and Chinese.

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What this interview tests

Backend service design in Java/Kotlin/Scala
Service-oriented or distributed systems architecture
Notification delivery timing, channel selection, and user-fatigue tradeoffs
On-call ownership: debugging production issues, runbooks, monitoring, rollback readiness
Cross-functional collaboration across global product and engineering teams
Data-driven decision-making and articulating technical tradeoffs

Common question themes

Design a notification system that avoids over-notifying a user across multiple channels.

Tell me about a production incident you debugged during on-call — what was the root cause and what did you change afterward?

Describe a backend service you built in Java/Kotlin/Scala end-to-end, including its failure modes.

How do you scope a project when requirements come from multiple partner product teams?

Tell me about mentoring a newer engineer through a code review or design discussion.

请用中文说明你如何在一个分布式系统里做流量削峰或消息去重。

How candidates describe it

Real Software Engineer interview stories — retold from candidates' public write-ups, with sources.

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