Manager of Software Engineering (Resilience Engineering)

Affirm; New York (NY); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first compensation structure

Spending wallets for tech, food, and生活

Mental healthcare programs

Away days & paid time off

Learning & development programs

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a seasoned Engineering Manager to lead our Resilience Engineering team.

This role focuses on ensuring the safety and reliability of production systems through proactive validation techniques, including production load testing and chaos engineering. You will design platforms and tooling for safe production experimentation, mentor engineers, and partner with infrastructure, product, and security leadership to embed resilience into the software lifecycle, with strong

Qualifications

• Familiarity with cloud-native environments (AWS, Kubernetes) and observability tooling.
• Strong communication and leadership skills with a track record of influencing engineering practices across teams.
• Strong understanding of failure modes in distributed systems, including latency, partial failure, and cascading outages.
• Proven experience leading engineering teams in reliability, infrastructure, or distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with production load testing, chaos engineering, or large-scale system validation.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Resilience Engineering team and define the vision for resilience practices across production systems.
• Design and evolve platforms enabling safe production load testing and fault injection with strong safeguards.
• Partner with infrastructure, product, and security leadership to embed resilience into the SDLC.
• Build reusable tooling, frameworks, and workflows to enable teams to test failures safely at scale.
• Drive reliability improvements by identifying weaknesses through load testing and chaos experiments.

Skills

Load testing

Chaos engineering

Leadership

Observability

Programming (Python/Kotlin/Java)

Cloud-native (AWS/Kubernetes)

Reliability engineering

Incident response

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

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
• Leadership & Strategy:
• 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
• Systems & Operations:
• 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
• Collaboration & Enablement:
• 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

Familiarity with cloud-native environments (AWS, Kubernetes) and observability toolingStrong communication and leadership skills, with a track record of influencing engineering practices across teamsStrong understanding of failure modes in distributed systems, including latency, partial failure, and cascading outagesProven experience leading engineering teams in reliability, infrastructure, or distributed systemsExperience building or operating systems with strong safety guarantees (isolation, rate limiting, guardrails, auditability)Experience with leveraging a chaos engineering vendor such as Gremlin, Harness, or something similarStrong programming background (e.g., Python, Kotlin, Java, or similar)This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related fieldExcellent problem-solving skills and the ability to balance long-term resilience investments with immediate business needsHands-on experience with production load testing, chaos engineering, or large-scale system validation