Moderation Lead

About The Role

We’re looking for an experienced Moderation Lead to take ownership of the day-to-day operation of the Community Center moderation function. This is a hands-on leadership role: you’ll manage a small team of moderators, own the operational rhythm of the programme, and act as the primary point of contact between the moderation team and Airbnb stakeholders.

This role sits at the intersection of people management, operations, policy, and community — and requires someone who is equally comfortable coaching a team member through a difficult moderation call as they are presenting programme health metrics to a senior stakeholder.

Responsibilities

Team Management

• Manage and develop a small team of content moderators – providing regular 1:1s, meaningful feedback, and coaching that sustains motivation and performance.
• Coach the team on nuanced guideline application – helping moderators build the judgement strike the right balance between community safety and keeping hosts genuinely engaged.
• Actively build team culture and psychological safety – creating an environment where moderators feel comfortable surfacing difficult calls, discussing hard content, and supporting one another across a shift-based working pattern.
• Own the team's training programme – designing and delivering calibration sessions, ensuring new moderators are onboarded effectively, and keeping the team aligned as guidelines and policy evolve.
• Continuously improve workflows, tooling, and processes to maintain quality and throughput as content volume grows — ensuring operational capacity scales without requiring headcount increases.
  
  

Operations & Process

• Own the operational health of the moderation programme: SLA tracking, queue management, throughput, and quality metrics
• Identify process gaps and drive improvements to workflows, tooling, and documentation — including evaluating and embedding AI-assisted moderation tools where they can meaningfully reduce manual load or improve consistency
• Manage escalation paths for complex or sensitive content, ensuring the right cases reach the right teams promptly
• Produce clear, actionable reporting that gives Airbnb stakeholders visibility into programme health and emerging trends
• Act as the operational voice of the moderation team with Airbnb's tooling teams — identifying gaps, influencing the product roadmap, and ensuring the team has what it needs to do the job well
  
  

Stakeholder Liaison

• Serve as the primary operational contact between the Standing on Giants moderation team and Airbnb’s internal teams (Community, Trust, Policy, Legal, CS).
• Attend regular check-ins with Airbnb stakeholders and come prepared with data, examples, and recommendations.
• Translate internal policy or product changes into clear, actionable guidance for the moderation team.
• Flag emerging community trends, recurring content patterns, or policy ambiguities to the relevant Airbnb owners.
• Escalate high-priority or sensitive issues — including safety, discrimination, and PR-risk content — through the correct channels and with appropriate urgency.
  
  

Policy Application

• Develop a deep working knowledge of Airbnb’s community standards, moderation playbook, and relevant regulatory requirements (DSA, UK Online Safety Act, GDPR).
• Own the consistent application of moderation policy across the team, identifying where guidelines are unclear and working with policy stakeholders to resolve ambiguity.
• Review and quality-check moderation decisions, identifying patterns in errors or edge cases that indicate a need for guidance updates.
• Support the development and maintenance of the moderation playbook, contributing real-world examples and operational learnings.
• Ensure the team is kept up to date with policy changes and that refresher training is delivered as needed.
  
  

Required Skills & Experience

• Previous experience leading or supervising a content moderation team, customer service, trust & safety operation, or similar function
• Strong understanding of content moderation principles, including handling of sensitive, harmful, or regulated content categories
• Confident people manager: you know how to give feedback well, build team morale, and support people doing emotionally demanding work
• Operationally rigorous: you track what matters, spot problems early, and drive continuous improvement without being asked
• Clear, professional communicator — both in written reporting and in verbal stakeholder conversations
• Comfortable working within structured escalation frameworks and across multiple internal teams
  
  

Nice to have

• Experience working within a community platform, social platform, or user-generated content environment
• Familiarity with Salesforce or similar case management / CMS tooling
• Working knowledge of DSA, UK Online Safety Act, or other online platform regulatory frameworks
• Experience in a contractor or outsourced delivery context, working closely with a brand-side client team
• Multilingual capability (the programme is expanding to multilingual content in later cohorts)
  
  

Working Arrangements

This core hours of this role will be 10am - 6pm GMT, but the role requires availability across the moderation team's shift-based schedule (Monday–Friday 5am–1pm GMT and 5pm–1am GMT, with weekend coverage 2pm–10pm GMT) in order to support the team if required and occasionally cover shifts (with days off in lieu).

Location

Location independent, with regular travel to London.

Criminal and financial background checks will be conducted on the successful candidate.