Senior Backend Engineer, Discovery & Search (Remote)

Affirm; Nashville (TN); Remote; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity rewards

Health and tech stipends

100% subsidized medical, dental, and…

Job summary

Affirm is seeking a senior backend engineering leader to shape the technical strategy for a team delivering search, recommendations, and discovery features on our advertising platform.

You will collaborate across product, design, and analytics to ensure reliability, performance, and scalable architectures while driving on-call readiness and code quality. The role emphasizes leadership, mentorship, and impactful delivery.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Experience building consumer experiences using UI frameworks like React.
• 2+ years working in search or related recommendation engines.
• Ability delivering major features through technical and execution plans.
• Comfort with ambiguity and moving from low-level code to system architecture.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team over a year and align with business goals.
• Collaborate across product, design and analytics to manage risks and trade-offs.
• Act as a force-multiplier for the team with robust technical solutions.
• Own operations and availability with monitoring, playbooks and on-call readiness.
• Establish code review standards and advocate for best practices beyond the team.
• Develop talent by providing feedback and hands-on guidance.

Skills

Backend design

Distributed systems

Python/Kotlin

React experience

Search/rec engines

Code quality

System architecture

Cross-functional communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Job description

Affirm is seeking a senior backend engineering leader to shape the technical strategy for a team delivering search, recommendations, and discovery features on our advertising platform.

You will collaborate across product, design, and analytics to ensure reliability, performance, and scalable architectures while driving on-call readiness and code quality. The role emphasizes leadership, mentorship, and impactful delivery.