Senior Backend Engineer - Distributed SQL & DB (Remote)

Affirm, Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 173,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Tech stipends

Generous time off

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Online Storage) to build and scale distributed SQL databases, including MySQL and TiDB, across a Kubernetes-based platform.

You will own the control plane, migrations, and networking to ensure low latency, high reliability, and seamless upgrades for mission-critical data services. You will collaborate with product, design and analytics, drive quarterly goals, and mentor teammates while delivering robust data infrastructure that

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience in backend systems.
• Experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Hands-on experience with large-scale database deployments.
• Expertise in distributed databases and SQL tuning/optimization.
• Experience with zero-downtime migrations and major version upgrades.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate the control plane for large-scale distributed SQL databases (MySQL, TiDB).
• Design reliable schema/data migrations with zero downtime.
• Own networking stack connections to storage on Kubernetes and tune latency/failover.
• Lead team goals, guide engineers, and support delivery.
• Collaborate with product/analytics to align on constraints and trade-offs.

Skills

5+ years experience

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Terraform

Kubernetes

Distributed systems

SQL tuning

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

Tools

ProxySQL

RDS Proxy

PgBouncer

Job description

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Online Storage) to build and scale distributed SQL databases, including MySQL and TiDB, across a Kubernetes-based platform.

You will own the control plane, migrations, and networking to ensure low latency, high reliability, and seamless upgrades for mission-critical data services. You will collaborate with product, design and analytics, drive quarterly goals, and mentor teammates while delivering robust data infrastructure that