Senior Database Infrastructure Engineer (Remote)

Affirm; Boston (MA); Remote; USD 173,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Tech stipends

Flexible time off

ESPP

Job summary

Affirm is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to architect and scale relational and distributed SQL databases, focusing on MySQL, TiDB and related tech. You’ll own the control plane, design zero-downtime migrations, and optimize the networking stack on Kubernetes while driving reliability and performance in a remote-friendly environment.

Join a team that values ownership, mentorship and a transparent pay structure, with competitive base pay across the U.S. and generous benefits.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as a software engineer.
• Experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with distributed databases and technologies like MySQL, TiDB, Postgres, Spanner, Vitess, CockroachDB.
• Strong SQL tuning and performance optimization knowledge.
• Experience with benchmarking, load testing and capacity planning.
• Familiarity with connection poolers and proxies such as ProxySQL and PgBouncer.
• Experience building control-plane or automation tooling for databases on Kubernetes.
• Ability to deliver zero-downtime migrations and major upgrades.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate the control plane for large-scale distributed SQL databases (MySQL, TiDB).
• Design reliable migrations across multi-tenant clusters with zero downtime.
• Own networking stack to connect services to storage on Kubernetes, including proxies.
• Deliver quarterly team goals and lead engineers through ambiguity.
• Collaborate with product, design and analytics in the lifecycle of features.
• Identify and solve project, process, technology, or business issues.
• Monitor metrics and support on-call efforts to keep services running.
• Set and improve code review and design standards across teams.
• Mentor and develop team members with feedback and example.

Skills

5+ years experience

Backend systems

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Terraform

Kubernetes

SQL tuning

Load testing

Education

Bachelor’s degree in related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

ProxySQL

RDS Proxy

PgBouncer

Job description

Affirm is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to architect and scale relational and distributed SQL databases, focusing on MySQL, TiDB and related tech. You’ll own the control plane, design zero-downtime migrations, and optimize the networking stack on Kubernetes while driving reliability and performance in a remote-friendly environment.

Join a team that values ownership, mentorship and a transparent pay structure, with competitive base pay across the U.S. and generous benefits.