Manager, Software Engineering (Reliability Platform)

Affirm; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 204,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care coverage

Flexible Spending Wallets

Competitive vacation and holiday schedules

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

Affirm is seeking a seasoned Engineering Manager to lead its Reliability Platform Engineering team in Houston, Texas. This pivotal role focuses on ensuring safety and reliability within production systems through innovative practices and tools.

The ideal candidate will have over 7 years of experience in backend engineering and extensive leadership skills. Affirm offers a competitive salary range of $204,000 – $264,000 based on location and experience, along with benefits like health coverage and flexible spending stipends.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in backend or full stack engineering.
• 2+ years of engineering leadership experience.
• Experience with Production Engineering or Site Reliability Engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead a high-performance product engineering team.
• Build reliable and scalable operational systems.
• Drive alignment across engineering teams.

Skills

Backend or full stack engineering

Leadership

Observability tools

Programming (Python, Kotlin, Java)

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience

Job description

Overview

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest.

We are seeking a seasoned Engineering Manager to lead our Reliability Platform Engineering team. This role is critical in ensuring the safety and reliability of our production systems through building products and capabilities that drive reliability practices at scale.

You will lead the development of systems and practices that allow engineers to understand, prioritize, and reduce systemic reliability risks across our production environment. This team is responsible for building foundational operational intelligence capabilities for the company. This includes next‑generation Reliability and Risk Management platform, which combines observability, AI, and operational workflows to help engineering teams proactively manage availability, resiliency, and operational excellence at scale.

This role sits at the intersection of Platform Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering. You will partner closely with Infrastructure and Product Engineering teams to define reliability standards, build scalable operational tooling, and drive adoption of engineering best practices across the company.

What You’ll Do

• Build and lead a high‑performance product engineering team with a focus on building a culture of innovation, accountability, reliability and execution.
• Leverage AI‑assisted engineering workflows to accelerate platform development, operational automation, and engineering productivity.
• Translate ambiguous operational and organizational challenges into clear technical requirements, execution plans, and measurable outcomes.
• Develop scalable reliability, risk management, and operational governance capabilities for production systems using observability tooling, automation, and AI.
• Build foundational systems that help engineers understand service ownership, dependencies, and operational topology across infrastructure and applications.
• Drive alignment across Platform Engineering, SRE, Infrastructure, and product engineering teams to define requirements, prioritize investments, and deliver long‑term technical roadmap outcomes.
• Drive execution and delivery for critical cross‑functional reliability initiatives with high organizational visibility.

What We Look For

• 7+ years of experience in backend or full stack engineering, with 2+ years of engineering leadership experience.
• Experience working within or alongside Production Engineering or Site Reliability Engineering teams.
• Expertise with observability tools, and building software or managing programs that drive engineering culture and reliability practices.
• Strong operational judgment and ability to drive clarity, prioritization, and execution in ambiguous problem spaces.
• Experience building internal platforms, developer tooling, reliability products, or operational automation systems at scale.
• Demonstrated ability to balance rapid iteration and experimentation with operational rigor and long‑term maintainability.
• Strong programming background (e.g., Python, Kotlin, Java, or similar).
• Strong communication and organizational leadership skills, with a track record of aligning stakeholders, driving execution, and influencing engineering practices across teams.
• This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Pay Grade – P

Equity Grade – 13

Employees new to the company typically start at the beginning of the pay range. Compensation is based on location, experience, and job‑related skills.

Base pay is part of a total compensation package that may include equity rewards, monthly stipends for health, wellness, and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental, and vision for the employee and dependents).

USA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT) per year: $230,000 – $290,000

USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $204,000 – $264,000

Benefits

• Health care coverage – the company covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents.
• Flexible Spending Wallets – generous stipends for spending on technology, food, various lifestyle needs, and family‑forming expenses.
• Time off – competitive vacation and holiday schedules that allow you to take time off to rest and recharge.
• ESPP – an employee stock purchase plan that enables you to buy shares at a discount.

We believe it’s on us to provide an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of individualized support during the hiring process.

For U.S. positions that could be performed in Los Angeles or San Francisco, pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the company will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

By clicking "Submit Application," you acknowledge that you have read the company’s Global Candidate Privacy Notice and hereby freely and unambiguously give informed consent to the collection, processing, use, and storage of your personal information as described therein.