Senior Principal, Competitive Intelligence
About the role
The Community You Will Join:
The Senior Principal, Competitive Intelligence will report to the Director, Product & Performance within Strategic Finance & Analytics. Airbnb is looking for a unique individual that can blend art and science to evaluate our evolving competitive landscape. This team is responsible for understanding the market across geographics and product offerings, building evaluation criteria and metrics, and delivering clear insights to leaders across the company.
The Difference You Will Make:
The individual will serve as the company's go-to authority on the competitive landscape, including current and future competitors, adjacent marketplaces, the travel industry at large and macroeconomic trends. They will partner with technical and business operating teams to synthesize competitive signals into clear, actionable narratives that inform executive decision-making at the highest levels of the company.
The ideal candidate brings a combination of sharp analytical instincts, business acumen, and the ability to distill complex information into crisp executive-ready stories. They are a self-starter who is comfortable operating with ambiguity, thrives in a fast-paced environment, and relishes the opportunity to own a critical capability from end to end. This person will have a high degree of visibility with senior leadership, including Executive and VP leaders across Finance, Product, Marketing and Business functions.
A Typical Day:
- Competitive Monitoring: Develop and manage regular reporting to review key metrics across marketplace and product; track developing news and industry trends; lead monthly leadership insights forum
- Strategic Deep Dives: Partner with key stakeholders across Supply, Global Markets, Product, and Marketing to conduct deep dives that will inform key decisions
- Data Strategy: Lead the competitive intelligence data strategy — evaluate data required to achieve key growth initiatives and potential data sources; own relationships with external data providers and research vendors
- Cross-Functional Enablement: Ensure competitive insights and datasets are accessible and actionable for XFN teams; partner with Engineering and Data teams to deliver reliable reporting infrastructure
Your Expertise:
- 12+ years of relevant business and insights experience. Ideally you have a mix of finance and analytics, management consulting, investment banking, and/or business operations.
- AI proficient or able to become AI proficient (Claude or Gemini).
- Ability to work and influence cross-functionally. You will need to partner across internal and external partners - proactively facilitating connections between teams
- Strong communication skills with audiences at various levels. You enjoy working with fragmented and synthesizing it into a story with recommendations
- Advanced presentation skills (Google Docs, Keynote, Excel)