Senior Backend Engineer - Search & Discovery Platform

Affirm; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 230,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage for you and dependents

Flexible Spending Wallets

Time off - vacation & holidays

Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)

Job summary

Affirm is building a remote-first engineering team focused on scalable backend systems. You will set technical strategy for your squad over a year, collaborate with product, design and analytics, and drive high-availability architectures using AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.

You will mentor engineers, enforce code quality, and help ship major features while navigating ambiguity. Successful candidates have 8+ years in backend development with Python or Kotlin, experience in search or

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with Python or Kotlin and building high-availability distributed systems.
• Experience with AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Experience delivering major features and writing high-quality code.
• Strong verbal and written communication across global teams.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for your team on a year-long timescale.
• Collaborate across product, design and analytics to ensure sustainability and risk management.
• Advocate for technical solutions and operational processes.
• Own team operations, monitoring, playbooks and on-call readiness.
• Foster a culture of quality, set code review standards, and mentor engineers.
• Develop talent through feedback and leading by example.

Skills

Backend design

Python/Kotlin

Distributed systems

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

React experience

Search / recommendations

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Job description

Affirm is building a remote-first engineering team focused on scalable backend systems. You will set technical strategy for your squad over a year, collaborate with product, design and analytics, and drive high-availability architectures using AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.

You will mentor engineers, enforce code quality, and help ship major features while navigating ambiguity. Successful candidates have 8+ years in backend development with Python or Kotlin, experience in search or