Senior Backend Engineer — Remote, Scale & Reliability

Affirm; Madison (WI); On-site; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Flexible Spending Wallets

Time off

ESPP

Job summary

Affirm is seeking a senior backend leader to set technical strategy for a year-long horizon and guide a team building large-scale services using Python or Kotlin.

You will drive collaboration across product management, design and analytics to ensure sustainability, reliability and clear trade-offs, and own operational processes and on-call readiness. You will mentor teammates while communicating with a global engineering team.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend design, development and large-scale deployment with Python or Kotlin.
• Proven ability to build highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Strong API design with reliable, idempotent services and clear failure modes in sensitive domains.
• Experience delivering major features via technical and execution plans with high-quality code.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and understand architecture of large systems.
• Proven track record of gathering feedback from engineers and cross-functional peers.
• Excellent verbal and written communication for a global team.
• Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for your team on a year-long horizon and tie it to business-impacting projects.
• Collaborate across product management, design and analytics to ensure sustainability, risks and trade-offs are understood.
• Act as a force-multiplier by defining and advocating technical solutions and operational processes.
• Own team operations and availability with monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, testing and on-call coverage.
• Foster quality and ownership by setting code review and design standards and sharing them broadly.
• Help develop talent by providing feedback and leading by example.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Distributed systems

API design

Code quality

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Job description

Affirm is seeking a senior backend leader to set technical strategy for a year-long horizon and guide a team building large-scale services using Python or Kotlin.

You will drive collaboration across product management, design and analytics to ensure sustainability, reliability and clear trade-offs, and own operational processes and on-call readiness. You will mentor teammates while communicating with a global engineering team.