went through the airbnb EM loop about six weeks ago. i've been through a lot of these at this point (hired out of meta, two rounds at google, one at stripe) and airbnb's process is meaningfully different in a few ways i want to document for people prepping.
first: airbnb invests heavily in the core values interview. for EM candidates there are two separate behavioral sessions, each 45 minutes, and they rotate interviewers so you're not telling the same story twice. the values they weight most for EMs seem to be "be a host" (servant leadership, literally their framing) and "embrace the adventure" (dealing with uncertainty, changing direction under pressure). you need real stories, not frameworks.
The rounds:
Coding: yes, EMs still code at airbnb. one medium-difficulty algo problem. i got a graph traversal. they're not trying to kill you, they just want to confirm you haven't completely checked out of the craft. if you've been managing for more than 3 years without writing production code, practice at least 2 weeks before.
System design: same as the IC loop but they'll pivot from pure technical design to "how would you staff and sequence this?" mid-session. be ready to talk about team structure, dependencies, and what you'd ship in v1 vs defer.
Cross-functional leadership: this was the one that felt most airbnb-specific. they gave me a scenario: your team owns a feature that another team's roadmap depends on. the other team's PM is not happy with your timeline. walk me through how you handle it. they were less interested in the resolution and more interested in how early i flagged it and how i kept both teams informed. communication cadence matters a lot in their culture.
Bar raiser equivalent: airbnb calls it something else internally but there's effectively a final interview from someone outside your team who calibrates against the company bar.
leveling note: L6 EM at airbnb is roughly equivalent to principal-manager or director at some other companies. make sure you calibrate the scope of your stories accordingly. small team anecdotes won't land if you're applying for L6.
took 5 weeks total. the debrief-to-offer step was the longest, 8 business days.