Staff Software Engineer, Backend

Summary

Join Affirm's Virtual Cards (VCN) Platform Engineering team and lead the technical strategy, collaborating with product, design, and analytics teams. You will ensure operational excellence, foster a culture of quality, and develop team talent. The ideal candidate has 7+ years of experience in backend system design and development at scale, expertise in distributed systems, and experience in the card network landscape. Affirm offers a competitive compensation package including equity, stipends, and comprehensive benefits. The position is remote-first, allowing flexibility to work from almost anywhere in the US. Affirm is committed to providing an inclusive interview experience.

Requirements

• You have 7+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin
• You have an extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes
• You have experience delivering major features, system components or deprecating existing functionality in a system through the definition of a technical and execution plan. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others
• You thrive in ambiguity, and are comfortable moving from low level language idioms all the way to the architecture of large systems to understand how they work
• Your growth and impact trajectory demonstrates that you have mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from your engineering and cross-functional peers
• You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team
• You have experience in the card network landscape, building and launching card products or adjacent payments related technologies
• This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for your team on a year-long time scale, and help your team tie it together with critical, business-impacting projects
• Collaborate across teams in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics to ensure technical sustainability, risks and trade-offs are well understood and managed
• Act as a force-multiplier for your team through your definition and advocacy of technical solutions and operational processes
• Take ownership of your team’s operations and availability by ensuring you have the right monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, polcities, testing and alerting in place to support “keep the lights on” & on-call efforts
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting code review and design standards for your team, and advocating for them beyond your team through your writing and tech talks
• Help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, and leading by example

Benefits

• Health care coverage - Affirm covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents
• Flexible Spending Wallets - generous stipends for spending on Technology, Food, various Lifestyle needs, and family forming expenses
• Time off - competitive vacation and holiday schedules allowing you to take time off to rest and recharge
• ESPP - An employee stock purchase plan enabling you to buy shares of Affirm at a discount