Senior Backend Architect - Distributed SQL & Data Platform

Affirm; Madison (WI); Remote; USD 173,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Stipends

Flexible time off

ESPP

Job summary

affirm is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to architect and scale relational and distributed SQL databases, spanning MySQL, TiDB and related systems. You will work on the control plane, provisioning, failover, backups and upgrades in a remote-first setup.

You will own migrations, networking on Kubernetes, and drive reliability, performance tuning and capacity planning. Collaboration with product and analytics is essential to deliver high-impact features.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience as a software engineer.
• Experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Terraform and Kubernetes.
• Hands-on experience with large-scale database deployments in production.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate the control plane for large-scale distributed SQL databases (MySQL, TiDB).
• Design migrations across multi-tenant clusters with zero downtime.
• Own networking stack between services and storage on Kubernetes, including proxies like ProxySQL.
• Deliver quarterly team goals and support delivery across the org.
• Collaborate with product management, design and analytics throughout the lifecycle.

Skills

5+ years experience

Backend systems

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Terraform

Kubernetes

Distributed databases

SQL tuning

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

ProxySQL

RDS Proxy

PgBouncer

Job description

affirm is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to architect and scale relational and distributed SQL databases, spanning MySQL, TiDB and related systems. You will work on the control plane, provisioning, failover, backups and upgrades in a remote-first setup.

You will own migrations, networking on Kubernetes, and drive reliability, performance tuning and capacity planning. Collaboration with product and analytics is essential to deliver high-impact features.