Manager, Software Engineering (Resilience Engineering)

Affirm; Houston (TX); Remote; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% health coverage

Tech stipends and wellness support

Flexible time off and holidays

ESPP equity program

Job summary

Affim is seeking a seasoned Engineering Manager to lead the Resilience Engineering team, driving production load testing and chaos engineering as core practices. You will shape platforms, tooling, and guardrails to safely validate system behavior under stress while protecting real users.

You will mentor engineers, partner with infrastructure and product leaders, and implement end-to-end observability and incident-response practices that continuously improve reliability across the production

Qualifications

• 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.
• Experience with chaos engineering vendors such as Gremlin or Harness.
• Strong understanding of failure modes in distributed systems.
• Experience with cloud-native environments (AWS, Kubernetes) and observability tooling.
• Strong programming background (Python, Kotlin, Java, or similar).
• Excellent problem-solving and leadership across teams.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead the resilience engineering team to build safe production experimentation platforms.
• Define vision and strategy for resilience validation integrated into SDLC.
• Mentor engineers, establish safeguards, and improve metrics and tooling.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, product, and security leadership to embed resilience practices.
• Evangelize a culture of testing failures to harden systems.

Skills

Leadership

Reliability

Chaos engineering

Production testing

Cloud/Kubernetes

Programming

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

Gremlin

Harness

Kubernetes

AWS

Job description

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.

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.

What you’ll do

Leadership & Strategy

• Define and drive the vision for resilience engineering at Affim, 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.

What we look for

• 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.
• Experience with leveraging a chaos engineering vendor such as Gremlin, Harness, or something similar.
• Strong understanding of failure modes in distributed systems, including latency, partial failure, and cascading outages.
• Experience building or operating systems with strong safety guarantees (isolation, rate limiting, guardrails, auditability).
• Familiarity with cloud‑native environments (AWS, Kubernetes) and observability tooling.
• Strong programming background (e.g., Python, Kotlin, Java, or similar).
• Excellent problem‑solving skills and the ability to balance long‑term resilience investments with immediate business needs.
• Strong communication and leadership skills, with a track record of influencing engineering practices across teams.
• This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Base Pay Grade - P

Equity Grade - 13

Employees new to Affim typically come in at the start of the pay range. Affim 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 equity rewards, monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your 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

Remote-first with flexibility built in

Affim 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 Affim 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 You

Our 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 Affim 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: Affim considers qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, as required by law.