Software Engineering Manager (Resilience Engineering)

Affirm; Ottawa; Remote; CAD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first

Generous time off

Health benefits

Mental healthcare

Parental leave

Away days

Learning & development

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. in Ottawa, Ontario, seeks a seasoned Engineering Manager to lead our Resilience Engineering team.

You will drive production load testing and chaos engineering, building platforms and tooling that let engineers safely test system behavior under stress in production. You will partner with infrastructure, product, and security leadership to embed resilience validation into the software development lifecycle, establish safeguards, and mentor a team focused on reliability, observability,

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with production load testing, chaos engineering, or large-scale system validation.
• Familiarity with cloud-native environments (AWS, Kubernetes) and observability tooling.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to balance long-term resilience investments with immediate business needs.
• Strong understanding of failure modes in distributed systems, including latency, partial failure, and cascading outages.
• Strong programming background (e.g., Python, Kotlin, Java, or similar).
• Proven experience leading engineering teams in reliability, infrastructure, or distributed systems.
• Experience with leveraging a chaos engineering vendor such as Gremlin, Harness, or something similar.
• Experience building or operating systems with strong safety guarantees (isolation, rate limiting, guardrails, auditability).
• Strong communication and leadership skills, with a track record of influencing engineering practices across teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of engineers building platforms and tooling for safe production experimentation.
• Define and drive the vision for resilience engineering with a focus on production load testing and chaos engineering.
• Partner with infrastructure, product, and security leadership to embed resilience validation into the software development lifecycle.
• Establish best practices for safely testing system limits and failure scenarios in production.
• Own the design and evolution of platforms that enable safe, controlled production load testing and fault injection.
• Ensure safeguards, including isolation boundaries, approval workflows, and automated rollback mechanisms to protect users.

Skills

Production load testing

Chaos engineering

Cloud-native environments

Observability tooling

Problem solving

Failure mode analysis

Strong programming background

Leading engineering teams

Vendor chaos engineering tools

Safety guarantees in systems

Communication & leadership

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Gremlin

Harness

Job description

• We are seeking a seasoned Engineering Manager to lead our Resilience Engineering team
• This role is critical in ensuring the safety and reliability of our production systems through proactive validation techniques, including production load testing and chaos engineering
• You will lead the development of systems and practices that allow engineers to safely test system behavior under stress and failure conditions in production, ensuring issues are discovered and mitigated before they impact real users
• Define and drive the vision for resilience engineering at affirm, with a focus on production load testing and chaos engineering as first-class engineering practices
• Lead and mentor a team of engineers building platforms and tooling for safe production experimentation
• Partner with infrastructure, product, and security leadership to embed resilience validation into the software development lifecycle
• Establish best practices for safely testing system limits and failure scenarios in production
• Own the design and evolution of platforms that enable safe, controlled production load testing and fault injection
• Ensure strong safeguards are in place, including isolation boundaries, approval workflows, and automated rollback mechanisms to protect real users
• Build systems that provide end-to-end observability, traceability, and auditability for all resilience experiments
• Drive reliability improvements by systematically identifying weaknesses through load testing and chaos experiments
• Establish monitoring, alerting, and incident response practices tailored to proactive resilience validation
• Work closely with engineering teams to design and execute production load tests and chaos experiments safely
• Partner with infrastructure teams to build guardrails around tests and experimentations
• Enable teams to adopt resilience practices by providing reusable tooling, frameworks, and standardized workflows
• Identify systemic weaknesses and lead cross-functional efforts to improve reliability and fault tolerance
• Evangelize a culture of "test failure before failure tests you" across the organization

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

• Hands-on experience with production load testing, chaos engineering, or large-scale system validation
• Familiarity with cloud-native environments (AWS, Kubernetes) and observability tooling
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to balance long-term resilience investments with immediate business needs
• Strong understanding of failure modes in distributed systems, including latency, partial failure, and cascading outages
• Strong programming background (e.g., Python, Kotlin, Java, or similar)
• Proven experience leading engineering teams in reliability, infrastructure, or distributed systems
• Experience with leveraging a chaos engineering vendor such as Gremlin, Harness, or something similar
• Experience building or operating systems with strong safety guarantees (isolation, rate limiting, guardrails, auditability)
• Strong communication and leadership skills, with a track record of influencing engineering practices across teams