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:
Airbnb is a mission-driven company dedicated to helping create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. The AirCover team supports this mission by standing up for Hosts and guests when things go wrong — often under intense scrutiny and at moments that materially impact trust in our platform. We operate in a fast-moving, high-stakes environment where decisions must be accurate, timely, and defensible.
We are looking for a resilient, highly skilled leader who thrives under pressure and excels at steering teams through urgent, sensitive, and complex escalations. This leader is capable of juggling multiple high-impact cases concurrently, providing sound judgement even when facts are incomplete, and maintaining steady direction for both the team and senior stakeholders. They will act as the operational leader for Service Recovery in moments where the Operations Manager is not present.
This role requires a strategic mindset, exceptional stakeholder management capability, and the ability to build and develop a high-performing team of escalation specialists who can operate at an executive-facing level.
The Difference You Will Make:
In this role, you will guide the Service Recovery team in delivering best-in-class support during our most sensitive, time-critical escalations. You will manage competing priorities, navigate ambiguity, and ensure we maintain rigor, consistency, and empathy even under pressure. You will help shape the broader AirCover escalation strategy while coaching the team to grow into trusted, high-judgement escalation handlers.
A Typical Day:
Team Leadership & Operations
- Own and manage end-to-end people strategy for the team: onboarding, capability building, continuous feedback, and performance management.
- Serve as the primary leader during high-pressure moments or when the Operations Manager is not available, ensuring continuity of service, judgement, and decision-making.
- Build a culture of accountability, clarity of expectations, and operational discipline across the team.
- Drive high-velocity prioritization, helping the team manage multiple urgent escalations while maintaining quality and adherence to protocols.
- Create and own monitoring metrics to ensure best-in-class community service.
Escalation & Case Management
- Oversee the handling of complex, sensitive, and time-critical escalations that carry brand, legal, financial, or trust risk.
- Serve on call as needed for incident response.
- Act as escalation point for point specialists and analysts for executive-level escalations, major incidents, and cross-functional escalations requiring fast, senior-level decision-making.
- Provide hands-on support for the most challenging cases, ensuring direction, narrative consistency, and airtight risk mitigation.
- Strengthen the team’s ability to independently handle high-judgement work by creating frameworks, playbooks, and escalation routing clarity.
Stakeholder Management & Influence
- Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders across Legal, Fraud and Safety Ops, Community Policy, Product, and Market Operations.
- Communicate effectively with executive audiences, synthesizing complex information and recommending a clear path forward under tight timelines.
- Influence cross-functional partners to drive resolution, unblock key decisions, and improve operational readiness for emerging risks.
Continuous Improvement & Strategic Impact
- Identify systemic weaknesses across processes, policies, and tools — and drive measurable improvements.
- Partner with the wider AirCover and Scaled Ops teams to shape roadmaps, strengthen safeguards, and refine how we manage high-stakes escalations globally.
- Lead or contribute to cross-functional projects that enhance the escalation ecosystem from end to end.
Your Expertise:
- 4–6+ years of experience leading teams in high-pressure escalation, crisis management, or risk-related environments.
- Proven experience of incident management in a fast-paced environment.
- Demonstrated ability to manage multiple urgent, complex cases simultaneously without sacrificing quality or judgement.
- Strong performance management skills and experience developing individuals into senior-calibre escalation or risk specialists.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to craft executive-ready narratives under time pressure.
- Proven ability to influence and align senior stakeholders, even when priorities or perspectives differ.
- High analytical capability and comfort making decisions in ambiguous, evolving contexts.
- Strong operational judgement and the ability to balance risk mitigation with customer experience.
- A calm, grounded leadership style that brings steadiness to the team in fast-moving and high-stakes moments.
- Experience hiring and managing globally dispersed employees is a plus.
Location: Singapore, Seoul, Korea, Tokyo, Japan