Product Security Engineer II

Affirm; Toronto; Remote; CAD 133,000 - 183,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care coverage

Flexible Spending Wallets

Time off

ESPP - Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

Affirm is seeking an early‑career Application Security Engineer who is curious, collaborative, and comfortable with code. You will help assess application risks, support vulnerability management, and partner with engineering on secure design decisions.

You will contribute lightweight tooling, automation, and code‑informed analysis to scale AppSec across Affirm, reading code and reviewing PRs in GitHub. This role offers hands‑on security work and growth opportunities to deepen offensive and

Qualifications

• 0–2+ years of experience in application security or related fields.
• Foundational programming ability in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Kotlin, or similar.
• Comfort reading, navigating, and reasoning about code, even in unfamiliar codebases.
• Experience using Git and GitHub or similar version-control workflows.
• Some hands-on experience building, testing, breaking, or securing software.
• Ability to write clear, maintainable scripts or small programs to automate workflows.
• Foundational understanding of common web, API, mobile, cloud security risks (OWASP Top 10).
• Interest in offensive security and security certifications.
• Exposure to vulnerability management concepts and risk-based prioritization.
• Strong product and engineering empathy and clear communication.
• Collaborative mindset across product, engineering, compliance, risk, and security teams.
• Curiosity and growth mindset with a drive to learn.

Responsibilities

• Identify application security risks with product and engineering teams and frame them as business risks and next steps.
• Read code, configuration, PRs, logs, and docs to understand systems and risk.
• Contribute small code changes, scripts, detections, tests, or automation to improve workflows.
• Review code changes in GitHub and track remediation in collaboration with engineers.
• Evaluate vulnerabilities from testing, bug bounties, tooling, and pen tests.
• Translate findings into reusable guidance, checklists, or automation.
• Work with engineers to understand system designs, data flows, trust boundaries, and auth models.
• Communicate security issues clearly to technical and non‑technical audiences, outlining mitigations and residual risk.
• Build relationships across affirm teams to influence security outcomes.
• Connect AppSec work to customer trust, regulatory expectations, and business resilience.
• Pursue hands‑on security skill development through labs, certifications, or internal programs.

Skills

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

Kotlin

Git & GitHub

Code reading

Tools

GitHub workflows

Job description

About The InfoSec & IT Team

The Application Security team helps affirm build and launch products that earn customer trust, meet compliance obligations, and reduce business risk. We partner closely with product, engineering, infrastructure, risk, compliance, and other teams to identify security risks early, recommend pragmatic mitigations, and help teams find safe paths to launch.

We are looking for an early-career Application Security Engineer who is curious, collaborative, and comfortable working with code. You will help assess application risks, support vulnerability management efforts, partner with engineering teams on secure design decisions, and contribute lightweight tooling, automation, and code-informed analysis that helps AppSec scale across affirm.

This role is a great fit for someone who has hands‑on software or security experience, enjoys reading and reasoning about code, is actively developing offensive security skills, and wants to apply those skills in a product‑minded, risk‑based way.

What You'll Do

• Partner with product and engineering teams to identify application security risks and help frame them as clear business risks, launch options, and recommended next steps.
• Read application code, configuration, pull requests, logs, and documentation to understand how systems work and where security risks may exist.
• Contribute small code changes, scripts, detections, tests, secure defaults, or automation that improve AppSec workflows and reduce recurring issues.
• Work in GitHub to review code changes, understand engineering context, participate in pull request discussions, track remediation work, and collaborate with engineers.
• Help evaluate vulnerabilities from internal testing, bug bounty reports, security tooling, penetration tests, and other sources; partner with teams to prioritize and remediate issues based on real‑world risk.
• Contribute to vulnerability management workflows, including triage, validation, severity assessment, remediation guidance, tracking, and reporting.
• Translate recurring security findings into repeatable mechanisms such as secure coding guidance, checklists, paved paths, lightweight automation, detection logic, reusable review patterns, or developer‑facing documentation.
• Work with engineers to understand system designs, data flows, trust boundaries, authentication and authorization models, code paths, and potential abuse cases.
• Communicate security issues clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences, including the risk, tradeoffs, recommended mitigations, and residual risk.
• Build strong relationships across affirm teams and influence security outcomes without relying on formal authority.
• Help connect AppSec work to customer trust, regulatory/compliance expectations, operational resilience, and business outcomes.
• Continue developing hands‑on offensive, defensive, and software engineering skills through practical work, labs, tooling, research, certifications, or contributions to internal security programs.

What We Look For

• 0–2+ years of experience in application security, software engineering, security engineering, vulnerability management, penetration testing, security operations, or equivalent practical experience.
• Foundational programming ability in one or more languages such as Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Kotlin, or similar.
• Comfort reading, navigating, and reasoning about code, even in unfamiliar codebases.
• Experience using Git and GitHub or similar version‑control workflows, including branches, commits, pull requests, code review, issues, or project tracking.
• Some hands‑on experience building, testing, breaking, or securing software. This could include professional experience, internships, security labs, CTFs, bug bounty work, open‑source contributions, personal projects, automation scripts, internal tools, or coursework.
• Ability to write clear, maintainable scripts or small programs to solve practical problems, automate manual workflows, analyze data, validate findings, or improve security processes.
• Foundational understanding of common web, API, mobile, cloud, and application security risks, such as OWASP Top 10 issues, authentication and authorization flaws, injection, insecure design, secrets exposure, dependency risks, and data protection concerns.
• Interest in offensive security, such as studying for or completing security certifications, practicing web/API testing, learning exploit development fundamentals, using tools like Burp Suite, or participating in labs and capture‑the‑flag environments.
• Exposure to vulnerability management concepts, including triage, severity assessment, remediation tracking, false‑positive analysis, compensating controls, and risk‑based prioritization.
• Ability to reason about risk and tradeoffs, not just identify issues. You can explain what could go wrong, how likely it is, what impact it may have, and what options exist to reduce risk.
• Strong product and engineering empathy. You seek to understand launch goals, technical constraints, user impact, and business priorities before recommending a path forward.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain security findings in practical, actionable terms.
• A collaborative mindset and comfort working across product, engineering, compliance, risk, infrastructure, and security teams.
• Curiosity, humility, and a growth mindset. You proactively seek feedback, ask good questions, and continue building your technical depth.
• Secure‑by‑design judgment, including the ability to spot patterns, recommend simple controls, and balance launch velocity with meaningful risk reduction.

Base Pay Grade

- L

Equity Grade

- 5

Employees new to affirm typically come in at the start of the pay range. affirm focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure which is based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job‑related skills.

Base pay is part of a total compensation package that may include monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents). In addition, the employees may be eligible for equity rewards offered by affirm holdings, inc.

CAN base pay range per year

CAD $133,000 - $183,000

Location - Remote Canada

This remote role is open only to candidates residing in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, or Saskatchewan.

Affirm is proud to be a remote‑first company! The majority of our roles are remote and you can work almost anywhere within the country of employment. affirmers in proximal roles have the flexibility to work remotely, but will occasionally be required to work out of their assigned affirm office. A limited number of roles remain office‑based due to the nature of their job responsibilities.

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

We believe It’s On Us to provide an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of individualized support during the hiring process.

[For U.S. positions that could be performed in Los Angeles or San Francisco] Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, affirm will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.