Airbnb's Journey To A Service-Oriented Architecture At 1,000-Engineer Scale

Presenters: Tiffany Low (TechLead - Airbnb) and Willie Yao (Engineering Manager - Airbnb)

In the evolution of a company’s architecture, there is an inflection point at which the increase in productivity and scalability of a decoupled service-oriented architecture outweighs the investment necessary to adopt a new architecture. At Airbnb, we are in the midst of a multiyear plan to feature-freeze our monolith at a time when we’ve already scaled to 1,000 engineers and have to support the high-velocity feature development and growth of three different businesses (Homes, Experiences, and Lux). We will share Airbnb’s learnings from adopting a service-oriented architecture under an environment of demanding development velocity and high organizational headwind.