Remote-First Staff Backend Engineer for Discovery

Affirm; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health, dental & vision benefits

Home office stipend

Tech/spending stipends

Remote-first

Job summary

Affim is building a remote-first engineering team to own discovery, search, and shopping experiences. You will design backend systems at scale, leveraging Python or Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes, while shipping features that improve consumer experiences.

You will collaborate across product, design, and analytics, drive technical strategy, and help grow talent through mentorship and code standards. This role emphasizes ownership, quality, and impact in a fast-moving environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
• Experience with highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Experience delivering consumer experiences with UI frameworks like React.
• 2+ years of experience working in search or related recommendation engines.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for your team on a year-long horizon and align it with impactful projects.
• Collaborate with product management, design and analytics to ensure sustainability, risks and trade-offs are understood.
• Act as a force multiplier by defining technical solutions and operational processes.
• Own team operations and availability with monitoring, playbooks, and on-call rotations.
• Set code review and design standards and advocate them beyond your team.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

React

Search/Recommendation Engines

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Job description

Affim is building a remote-first engineering team to own discovery, search, and shopping experiences. You will design backend systems at scale, leveraging Python or Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes, while shipping features that improve consumer experiences.

You will collaborate across product, design, and analytics, drive technical strategy, and help grow talent through mentorship and code standards. This role emphasizes ownership, quality, and impact in a fast-moving environment.