Senior Backend Engineer (Lakehouse Infrastructure)

Affirm, Inc.; Ottawa; Remote; CAD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first compensation structure

Spending Wallets for tech, food, and生活

Health benefits

Mental healthcare

Parental leave: 18 weeks + return-to‑n

Away days

Learning & Development

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a senior backend/data infra engineering leader to own quarterly goals for a high-availability data platform spanning OLTP/OLAP, batch orchestration, streaming, and analytics tooling.

You will guide engineers through ambiguity, collaborate with product management, design and analytics, and drive reliable data platforms at scale. You will foster ownership, oversee on-call efforts, and set high standards for code quality and design.

Qualifications

• Experience defining a technical plan for delivering a major feature or system component.
• Ability to write high quality code and maintainable architectures.
• Experience scaling distributed systems in cloud environments.
• Strong collaboration with product, design, and analytics teams.

Responsibilities

• Own quarterly goals for your team and guide engineers through ambiguity.
• Collaborate with product management, design & analytics across the development lifecycle.
• Identify and resolve project, process, or technology issues proactively.
• Support operations and on-call efforts to maintain reliability.
• Promote code quality standards and lead by example.

Skills

People leadership

Cross-team collaboration

Code quality

Ownership mentality

Verbal and written communication

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

Iceberg

Flink

Airflow

Spark

Kafka

Snowflake

Terraform

AWS

MySQL

Kubernetes

Job description

• The Data and Storage Services team is responsible for affirm’s data infrastructure across OLTP and OLAP systems, spanning critical online checkout databases, batch orchestration, streaming infrastructure, event-driven frameworks, BI, analytics tooling, large-scale data platforms, and agentic data tools such as semantic layers and internal platform data applications. Our mission is to provide trustworthy, intuitive, and cost-efficient solutions for affirmers to secure, store, analyze, and transform data at exceptional scale
• The vision for the Lakehouse Infra team is to provide reliable, scalable, self-serve and affirm-optimized offline data access to enable ML, Product, and Financial Engineering success. Our team is responsible for hosting the data infrastructure that serves as a backbone for processing various business critical money and loan movement workloads at affirm across our batch and analytics ecosystems. affirm is growing rapidly and so is the need for reliable and high availability frameworks. If solving data lake challenges at scale excites you, come join us!
• You will be responsible for owning and delivering quarterly goals for your team, leading engineers on your team through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, and ensuring that everyone is supported throughout delivery
• You will support your peers and stakeholders in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics by participating in ideation, articulating technical constraints, and partnering on decisions that properly consider risks and trade-offs
• You will proactively identify project, process, technology or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them
• You will support the operations and availability of your team’s artifacts by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating when needed, and supporting “keep the lights on” & on-call efforts
• You will foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting or improving code review and design standards for your team, and advocating for them beyond your team through your writing and tech talks
• You will help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, and leading by example

Benefits

• Compensation: We have a simple, flexible, and transparent remote-first compensation structure so you can make the best decisions for yourself and your family
• Spending Wallets: Access tech, food, lifestyle, and family planning wallets for your expenses
• Supportive Communities: Get involved with our employee resource groups and community groups
• Remote-first Workforce: If your role is remote, you can set up shop anywhere in your home country
• Generous Time Off: Take the time you need when life happens
• Health Benefits: Get a plan that fits your needs
• Mental Healthcare: Take care of your mind with great mental health programs
• Parental Leave: Birth and non-birth parents get 18 weeks’ paid leave. Plus, a 4-week return-to-work transition program, at full base pay
• Away Days: We offer 20 company-wide paid days off—which help our teams collectively pause to recharge
• Learning & Development: Engage in exciting learning programs to level up your growth

This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related fieldYou have experience defining a technical plan for the delivery of a significant feature or system component with an elegant, simple and extensible design. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by othersYou are proficient at making significant changes in a large code base, and have developed a suite of tools and practices that enable you and your team to do so safelyYou have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering teamExperience scaling relevant technologies such as Iceberg, Flink, Airflow, Spark, Kafka, Snowflake, and TerraformYou have a track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, and KubernetesYou have 4+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or KotlinYour experience demonstrates that you take ownership of your growth, proactively seeking feedback from your team, your manager, and your stakeholders