Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Recoveries)

Affirm, Inc.; España; Remote; EUR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Equity rewards

Remote-friendly

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to guide the backend Recoveries platform at scale. You will own technical direction, drive cross-team initiatives, and ensure reliability, data integrity and compliant workflows across partner integrations and customer experiences.

The role is remote from Spain with visa sponsorship possible and a strong emphasis on collaboration, architecture, and mentoring. You will work with product, design and analytics to deliver end-to-end outcomes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience as a software engineer.
• Backend systems design and deployment at scale.
• Experience with Python and Kotlin.
• Strong knowledge of AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for your team on a year-long horizon.
• Drive cross-team initiatives to improve recovery platform reliability.
• Collaborate with product, design and analytics to ensure sustainability.
• Advocate for scalable, secure, and compliant architectures.
• Own operations, monitoring, on-call readiness and incident response.

Skills

Software engineering

Backend design

Python

Kotlin

Distributed systems

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Kubernetes

Job description

Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Recoveries)

Remote Spain

At affirm, we exist for the moments that matter—giving people a clear, predictable way to pay over time, with no hidden fees, no surprises, and no tradeoffs on what matters most.

The Recoveries team, part of affirm’s Repayments area, builds the platform that determines the most effective way to recover value from charged-off loans while providing the best possible customer experience. We do this both by integrating with external recovery partners and by building our own customer-facing experiences that give customers flexible ways to resolve their outstanding balances.

Our systems span the full recoveries lifecycle, including loan placement and recall, partner integrations, payments and remittances, reconciliation, bankruptcy workflows, and customer-facing recovery experiences. Recoveries operates at the intersection of engineering, product, risk, analytics, operations, finance, legal, and compliance, and our systems directly impact recovery outcomes while requiring a high degree of correctness, reliability, and regulatory compliance.

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help define the technical direction of the Recoveries platform as we scale our decisioning capabilities, expand internationally, strengthen our data integrity and reconciliation foundations, and build the next generation of recovery products.

What You’ll Do

• You will be responsible for setting technical strategy for your team on a year-long time scale, and help your team tie it together with critical, business-impacting projects.
• You will help shape the evolution of the Recoveries platform, driving cross-team technical initiatives that optimize recovery strategies, enable flexible customer-facing experiences, and strengthen the reliability and scalability of our financial and partner integrations.
• You will collaborate across teams in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics to ensure technical sustainability, risks and trade-offs are well understood and managed.
• You will act as a force-multiplier for your team through your definition and advocacy of technical solutions and operational processes.
• You take ownership of your team’s operations and availability by ensuring you have the right monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, policies, testing and alerting in place to support “keep the lights on” & on-call efforts.
• You will foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting 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 and guidance, and leading by example.
• On-Call Rotation - There would be an on-call rotation for this role as a requirement.

What we look for

• You have a total of 8+ years of experience as a software engineer.
• You are proficient in designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale technologies like Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes
• You have experience designing and operating correctness-sensitive batch, asynchronous, or data-processing systems, including scheduled workflows, backfills, reconciliation, observability, and robust failure handling.
• You have experience architecting solutions across complex systems and organizational boundaries, and are comfortable understanding and driving changes outside your immediate area of ownership—including across backend services and customer-facing applications to deliver end-to-end outcomes.
• You have experience delivering major features, system components or deprecating existing functionality in a system through the definition of a technical and execution plan. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
• You thrive in ambiguity, and are comfortable moving from low level language idioms all the way to the architecture of large systems to understand how they work.
• Your growth and impact trajectory demonstrates that you have mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from your engineering and cross-functional peers.
• You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.

Base Pay Grade - P

Equity Grade - 6

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. (parent company).

Additional benefits include:

• Flexible Spending Wallets for tech, food and lifestyle
• Away Days - wellness days to take off work and recharge
• Employee Resource & Community Groups

We are able to offer visa sponsorship for this role, but do require that someone is based in Spain for the role.

Location - Remote Spain

Remote-first with flexibility built inaffirm is proud to be a remote-first company. Most roles can be done from almost anywhere within the country of employment. Some positions may occasionally require in-person work at an affirm office, and a few are office-based due to the nature of the work. All new hires will be invited to attend an in-person onboarding experience.

Benefits designed for youOur benefits reflect our commitment to care, transparency, and flexibility. Here are a few highlights:

• Health coverage at no cost: We cover 100% of premiums for employees and their dependents.
• Spending stipends: Monthly stipends support your tech setup, and the ability to choose health and wellness options that are right for you.
• Time off to recharge: Flexible time off and generous holiday calendars help you rest when you need to.
• Own a piece of what you build: Our employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) lets you buy affirm stock at a discount.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive interview process, including accommodations for candidates with disabilities. If you need support, we’re happy to help.

For positions based in San Francisco or Los Angeles: affirm considers qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, as required by law.