Senior Backend Architect: Distributed SQL & Storage (Remote)

Affirm; Richmond (VA); Remote; USD 173,000 - 233,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Tech stipends

Flexible time off

ESPP

Job summary

Affir is a remote-first company seeking a Senior Software Engineer to architect, build, and scale relational and distributed SQL databases. You’ll automate provisioning, backups, upgrades, and failovers, while owning the networking stack and steering quarterly team goals.

Collaborate with product, design and analytics to deliver dependable data infrastructure. You will contribute to high‑quality code, drive improvements, and mentor teammates while supporting on‑call reliability and operational

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• Backend systems at scale with Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Terraform and Kubernetes.
• Hands-on large-scale production database deployments.
• Distributed databases: MySQL, TiDB, Postgres, Spanner, Vitess, CockroachDB.
• SQL tuning and performance optimization techniques.
• Database benchmarking, load testing and capacity planning.
• Familiar with ProxySQL, RDS Proxy, PgBouncer, PgDog.
• Built control‑plane or automation tooling for databases on Kubernetes.
• Zero-downtime migrations and major upgrades; CLI/runbooks.
• Kubernetes networking, TLS and service discovery.
• High‑quality code and simple, extensible design.
• Ownership mindset; proactive feedback and growth.
• Strong written and verbal communication with a global team.
• Equivalency: practical experience or Bachelor’s in a related field.

Responsibilities

• You will build and operate the control plane for large-scale distributed SQL databases (MySQL, TiDB) end to end.
• You will design reliable schema/data migrations across multi-tenant clusters with zero downtime.
• You will own networking to storage on Kubernetes, including proxies, for latency and failover.
• You will deliver quarterly goals and guide engineers through ambiguity.
• You will collaborate with product, design and analytics across the lifecycle.
• You will identify and solve project, process, tech or business issues.
• You will monitor metrics and support keep‑the‑lights‑on efforts.
• You will raise code quality and design standards across the team.

Skills

5+ years exp

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Terraform

Kubernetes

TiDB

Postgres

Spanner

Vitess

CockroachDB

ProxySQL

RDS Proxy

PgBouncer

PgDog

Zero-downtime migrations

SQL tuning

Load testing

Capacity planning

Automation tooling

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

ProxySQL

PgBouncer

RDS Proxy

PgDog

Terraform

Job description

Affir is a remote-first company seeking a Senior Software Engineer to architect, build, and scale relational and distributed SQL databases. You’ll automate provisioning, backups, upgrades, and failovers, while owning the networking stack and steering quarterly team goals.

Collaborate with product, design and analytics to deliver dependable data infrastructure. You will contribute to high‑quality code, drive improvements, and mentor teammates while supporting on‑call reliability and operational