Remote Senior Backend Engineer: Search & Discovery

Affirm; Madison (WI); On-site; USD 204,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care coverage

FSA Wallets

Time off

ESPP

Job summary

Affirm is seeking an experienced backend leader to set technical strategy for a remote-first team building scalable services. You will collaborate across product, design and analytics to ensure sustainable systems and measurable business impact.

You will own operations, drive high-quality code, and mentor engineers while enabling rapid delivery of major features in a fast-growing payments platform. This role requires strong communication in a global team and a track record of shipping robust

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with Python or Kotlin.
• Experience with highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark & Kubernetes.
• Experience developing user-facing experiences using UI frameworks like React.
• 2+ years of experience in search or related recommendation engines.
• Delivers major features through defined technical & execution plans.
• Able to reason from low-level code to architecture in large systems.
• Strong communication across global engineering teams and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon.
• Collaborate across product, design and analytics across the lifecycle.
• Act as a force-multiplier by defining technical solutions and processes.
• Own team operations and on-call readiness with monitoring & playbooks.
• Set code review and design standards and propagate them beyond the team.
• Mentor and develop engineering talent through feedback and guidance.

Skills

Backend design

Python

Kotlin

Distributed systems

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

React

Search/recommendations

Communication

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Job description

Affirm is seeking an experienced backend leader to set technical strategy for a remote-first team building scalable services. You will collaborate across product, design and analytics to ensure sustainable systems and measurable business impact.

You will own operations, drive high-quality code, and mentor engineers while enabling rapid delivery of major features in a fast-growing payments platform. This role requires strong communication in a global team and a track record of shipping robust