Staff Backend Engineer, Search & Discovery (Remote)

Xapply; Canada; Remote; CAD 290,000 - 413,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage for dependents

Equity rewards (ESPP)

Job summary

Affirm is building a next‑gen advertising platform and search-enabled marketplace that helps people discover, compare, and shop with confidence. The team is focused on routing, discovery, and a foundation for an agentic platform to empower consumer experiences across Affirm’s ecosystem.

The role emphasizes ownership, technical leadership, and collaboration across product and analytics, with a remote‑first culture and a strong focus on quality and reliability.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using Python or Kotlin.
• Experience building highly available distributed systems with AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Experience developing consumer experiences with UI frameworks like React.
• 2+ years in search or related recommendation engines.
• Ability to deliver major features through a defined technical plan and clean code.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team on a yearly horizon.
• Collaborate with product management, design and analytics for sustainability and risks.
• Define solutions and operational processes; act as a force-multiplier.
• Own team operations, monitoring, on-call readiness, playbooks and triage.
• Set code and design standards and advocate for them beyond the team.
• Mentor and develop team talent through feedback and example.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

React

Search

Recommendation Engines

Backend Systems

Distributed Systems

Technical Strategy

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

None

Job description

Affirm is building a next‑gen advertising platform and search-enabled marketplace that helps people discover, compare, and shop with confidence. The team is focused on routing, discovery, and a foundation for an agentic platform to empower consumer experiences across Affirm’s ecosystem.

The role emphasizes ownership, technical leadership, and collaboration across product and analytics, with a remote‑first culture and a strong focus on quality and reliability.