Staff Backend Engineer - Search & Discovery, Remote Canada

Affirm; Halifax; On-site; CAD 181,000 - 241,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage (employee & dependents

Equity rewards

401(k) or equivalent retirement plan

ESP - Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Flexible Spending Wallets

Paid time off and holidays

Job summary

Affirm is building a remote-first engineering team in Canada to own the discovery and search experiences across our platform. You will set technical strategy, drive scalable backend systems, and collaborate with product and design to deliver high-impact features for consumers.

You will guide architecture across AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes, contribute to React-driven UI work, and help grow the team with mentoring and strong coding practices. This role emphasizes ownership and delivery.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale with Python or Kotlin.
• Experience building highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Experience delivering consumer experiences using React.
• 2+ years in search or related recommendation engines.
• Proven ability to define technical plans and execute major features.
• Comfort with ambiguity and understanding large-scale architectures.
• Strong communication and collaboration with global engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon and align with business goals.
• Collaborate with product, design and analytics to ensure sustainable solutions and trade-offs.
• Act as a force-multiplier by defining and advocating technical solutions and processes.
• Own team operations and availability with monitoring, on-call readiness, and playbooks.
• Foster a culture of quality through code reviews and design standards.
• Develop talent by giving feedback and leading by example.

Skills

Backend design

Distributed systems

Python/Kotlin experience

Code quality & reviews

Cross-functional collaboration

Leadership & mentorship

Strong communication

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

React

Job description

Affirm is building a remote-first engineering team in Canada to own the discovery and search experiences across our platform. You will set technical strategy, drive scalable backend systems, and collaborate with product and design to deliver high-impact features for consumers.

You will guide architecture across AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes, contribute to React-driven UI work, and help grow the team with mentoring and strong coding practices. This role emphasizes ownership and delivery.