The posting
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.
The Community You Will Join:
The Partner QA Lead is the Airbnb Quality owner for the Elevated Support service tier across a portfolio of Community Support BPO partner sites. Working across partner QA teams, this role makes sure that each site scores interactions consistently, calibrates to the same standard as Airbnb, and turns what it finds into insight that Delivery and Partners can act on.
The Difference You Will Make:
Elevated Support is Airbnb's newest Community Support service tier, built for guests with urgent, complex or high-stakes issues. Cases are identified by an Elevated decisioning model, routed to a dedicated pool of specialized Specialists across voice, async and back-office queues, and supported around the clock by partner sites in multiple regions and languages. Its north-star metric is NPS, case resolution, cost per case, and reopen rate. Because the tier is new, its quality targets, scorecard and evaluation approach are still maturing, and this role helps set them.
The Partner QA Lead is paired with a Delivery (Ops) counterpart: Quality owns the standard, the evidence and the diagnosis, and Delivery and Quality partner on actions.
This is a hands-on, partner-facing execution role and a subject matter expert on Airbnb's quality standards. The Partner QA Lead is responsible for making the Quality program work on the ground: holding partner QA teams accountable, running calibration on the Lead With Hospitality (LWH) COPC form, diagnosing behavior opportunities before the weekly business reviews, and driving actions to address issues and opportunities for guests with urgent, high-stakes needs. The role works closely with the Quality Leads, other Partner QA Leads, Delivery, Training, Knowledge Management, the Elevated Support program team and Business Process Improvement (BPI), and is expected to become an expert in new standards and tools, such as Lead With Hospitality (LWH) QA framework and Observe.AI, and then to drive adoption across its partners.
A Typical Day:
Partner Quality Program Execution
- Own the day-to-day execution of the Quality program for the Elevated Support service tier and the corresponding partner sites, languages and queues (voice, async and back office), including weekly QA evaluation targets, evaluation completeness, and coaching activity within your portfolio.
- Validate performance data before every business review (WBR, MBR, QBR): confirm that partner QA scores are complete, accurate and comparable, then explain week-over-week movements in a short, clear narrative that Delivery and partner leadership can act on.
- Run the Quality portion of each partner's operating cadence: weekly QA syncs, a pre-sync with your ROM/POM before each WBR, and the monthly and quarterly business reviews.
Partner Governance & Accountability
- Hold partner QA teams to the Partner Scorecard: evaluation completeness, calibration accuracy, coaching effectiveness and actionable insights. Document gaps and agree action plans with owners and dates.
- Audit the auditors: sample and re-score partner evaluations to confirm they follow the standard, and escalate sustained performance gaps to the Quality Lead.
- Support new partner site onboarding, language expansion and site visits, making sure each new Elevated Support site and cohort is certified and calibrated to Airbnb standards before it scales, including interim QA coverage by experienced partner QAs while a new site stands up its own team.
Calibration & LWH Standards
- Run calibration sessions across your Elevated Support partner sites on the LWH form, including evaluations scored at case level across every Specialist who touched the case, and track alignment at attribute and causal-factor level, so that quality is measured the same way regardless of partner or geography.
- Support partner Team Lead calibration, including the weekly sessions that Partner Quality runs within each site, so Team Leads coach specialists in the same language as Quality.
- Triage partner feedback on the form and recommend scoring guide updates through the Calibration DRI. Quality owns the standard; partners do not change it locally.
Insights, NPS Detractor Analysis & Escalation
- Lead NPS detractor analysis, including the Global Detractor Analysis (GDA) framework, for Elevated Support, where NPS is the north-star metric. Correlate QA results with NPS, reopen rate, AQS and other operational KPIs, and point partner QA effort toward the sites, languages and case types that need it most.
- Partner with Delivery, WFM and the Elevated Support program team to establish and refine QA targets and the tier scorecard, using LWH data to recommend realistic, evidence-based targets (for example where sites report they cannot reach targets carried over from volume tiers) and to monitor early-life performance of new sites and cohorts.
- Validate the Elevated model end to end: sample cases to confirm the right cases are being identified and escalated to the tier, that handoffs and transfers (including to Premium Support and language queues) work as intended, and that the tier is staffed and routed so guests reach an Elevated Specialist.
- Deep-dive repeat trends and build the business case for them. Route issues by type: tactical issues (coaching, site issues fixable with Learning Loft content) go to partner QA teams and Delivery, and macro issues go to OneTrack with an evidence pack, together with your ROM/POM.
- Give partner QA teams and Delivery the data they need to find root cause: by partner, site, Specialist cohort, Specialist quartile and contact reason.
- Share best practices with other Partner QA Leads, and cover for peers or the Quality Lead during staffing gaps, including language or regional coverage and short rotations.
Tools, Reporting & Cross-Functional Rollouts
- Drive adoption of Observe.AI across your Elevated Support partner sites, including AutoQA review and annotation, access and permission hygiene, and the transition from interim evaluation forms to Observe.AI.
- Be an expert on every new Quality initiative, such as LWH, Global Detractor Analysis, and Specialist Investigation Skills, and cascade it to your partners with clear expectations, training and follow-up.
- Represent Quality for Elevated Support in cross-functional working groups (Product, program management, Knowledge Management, Training, Workforce and Routing) as the single point of contact for your partners, and make sure quality findings that point to policy, workflow or product gaps are raised, not left as coaching notes.
- Protect partner QA capacity for strategic work such as deep dives and root-cause analysis, rather than ad hoc requests that are outside agreed scope.
Your Expertise:
- 6+ years of experience in Community or Customer Support Quality, Operations or a related field, including direct experience with QA programs across BPO or partner networks and experience supporting high-touch, escalated or premium service tiers.
- Bachelor's Degree, preferably in related field required.
- Demonstrated experience driving partner accountability: running calibration sessions, reviewing partner QA scorecards, and writing and following through on improvement plans with BPO QA teams.
- Working knowledge of COPC methodology or an equivalent governance model: sampling requirements, calibration, and objective, behavior-based scoring forms.
- Strong analytical skills: able to read weekly QA and KPI data (NPS, CSAT, iSAT, reopen rate, cost per case), diagnose the cause of score movements, and turn it into a clear narrative for Delivery and partner leadership.
- Experience with QA platforms such as Observe.AI, or equivalent, including calibration management, form use and review of automated or AI-assisted scoring.
- Excellent written and verbal communication; able to run a productive calibration session across time zones and present quality findings to senior Delivery stakeholders with confidence.
Your Location:
This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.
Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:
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.
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: [email protected]. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process.
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.
Equal Employment Opportunity:
Airbnb values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Airbnb are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic.
How We'll Take Care of You:
Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.
Pay Range
$106,000—$125,000 USD
Reasonable Accommodations: We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.
A Note on Recruiting Scams: Scammers sometimes pose as Airbnb recruiters to get money or personal information from candidates. A few things that will always be true for Airbnb’s hiring process: our open roles are posted on Airbnb’s Career’s Page at careers.airbnb.com, and our recruiters correspond only from @airbnb.com or @ext.airbnb.com email addresses. Our recruiters will never ask for your Social Security number, bank account details, passport, or payment app information while you are interviewing. We’ll also never ask you to pay a fee, send money, deposit or cash a check, or purchase work-related equipment (such as a company laptop) during the interview process. We encourage candidates to remain vigilant of these recruiting scams and not share sensitive information if you do not believe an individual is actually affiliated with Airbnb.
