Senior Backend Engineer - Remote, Equity & Impact

Affirm, Inc.; Chicago (IL); Remote; USD 170,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Stipends for tech setup

Flexible time off

ESPP

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to own and deliver scalable backend systems. You’ll collaborate with a global team, write high-quality code, and drive architectural decisions for the next generation of the Affirm platform.

The role emphasizes ownership, collaboration, and delivering reliable, extensible solutions. This remote-first position offers strong compensation and a comprehensive benefits package across the United States.

Qualifications

• You have 4+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
• You have a track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes.
• You have experience defining a technical plan for the delivery of a significant feature or system component with an elegant, simple and extensible design. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
• You are proficient at making significant changes in a large code base, and have developed a suite of tools and practices that enable you and your team to do so safely.
• Your experience demonstrates that you take ownership of your growth, proactively seeking feedback from your team, your manager, and your stakeholders.
• You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.
• This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Responsibilities

• Own and deliver quarterly goals for your team, leading engineers through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems.
• Collaborate with product management, design & analytics in ideation, articulating constraints, and balancing risks and trade-offs.
• Identify and lead efforts to address project, process, technology, or business issues.
• Support operations and availability of team artifacts by creating/monitoring metrics and on-call readiness.
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership by setting code review and design standards.
• Develop talent by giving feedback and leading by example.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Kubernetes

Technical planning

Code ownership

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to own and deliver scalable backend systems. You’ll collaborate with a global team, write high-quality code, and drive architectural decisions for the next generation of the Affirm platform.

The role emphasizes ownership, collaboration, and delivering reliable, extensible solutions. This remote-first position offers strong compensation and a comprehensive benefits package across the United States.