Senior Backend Observability Lead — Remote

Affirm, Inc.; Atlanta (GA); Remote; USD 204,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage for you and dependents

Monthly stipends for tech setup and H&

Time off & holidays

Job summary

AFFIRM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You’ll own the telemetry pipeline architecture, drive cross-functional projects, and mentor a team of six engineers.

The role blends hands-on coding with roadmap ownership, collaboration with product and infrastructure, and a focus on scalable observability practices. Remote-first with flexibility, AFFIRM offers a transparent pay structure and equity rewards.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with AWS, MySQL, Flink and Kubernetes.
• Experience building telemetry systems using OpenTelemetry, Kafka and Terraform.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills for global collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of AFFIRM’s telemetry pipeline, balancing reliability, query performance and cost at 200+ TB/day.
• Design log sampling strategies to reduce volume and cost while preserving signal during incidents.
• Shape how observability fits into agentic development and AI coding workflows.
• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon and align with business goals.
• Collaborate across product management, design and analytics to ensure sustainability, risks and trade-offs are understood.
• Act as a force-multiplier for your team through defined solutions and operational processes.
• Ensure operations and availability with monitoring, on-call playbooks, and incident response readiness.
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership through coding standards and write-ups.
• Develop talent by providing feedback and guidance and leading by example.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Flink

Kubernetes

Job description

AFFIRM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You’ll own the telemetry pipeline architecture, drive cross-functional projects, and mentor a team of six engineers.

The role blends hands-on coding with roadmap ownership, collaboration with product and infrastructure, and a focus on scalable observability practices. Remote-first with flexibility, AFFIRM offers a transparent pay structure and equity rewards.