Senior Software Engineer, Backend

Affirm; United States; Remote; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a senior backend engineer to own identity engineering systems, ensuring high availability and low latency on critical paths in a remote-first environment.

You will drive design and delivery of scalable services in Python or Kotlin and collaborate across product, design, and analytics to align on requirements and constraints. The role emphasizes reliability, on-call readiness, and measurable impact on authentication and verification journeys across Affirm’s product

Qualifications

• 4+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
• Track record developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes.
• Experience defining a technical plan for a significant feature or system component with elegant, simple, extensible design; high-quality, easily understood code.
• Proficient at making significant changes in a large code base, with tools and practices to do so safely.
• Takes ownership of growth, proactively seeking feedback from team, manager, stakeholders.
• Strong verbal and written communication supporting collaboration with a global engineering team.

Responsibilities

• Own and deliver quarterly goals, leading engineers through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, ensuring everyone is supported throughout delivery.
• Support peers and stakeholders in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design and analytics in ideation, articulating technical constraints, partnering on decisions considering risks and trade-offs.
• Proactively identify project, process, technology or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them.
• Support operations and availability of team artifacts by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating when needed, supporting “keep the lights on” and on-call efforts.
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership by setting and improving code review and design standards, advocating beyond the team through writing and tech talks.
• Help develop talent by providing feedback and guidance and leading by example.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

Distributed systems

AWS

Kubernetes

Communication

On-call

Education

Bachelor's degree in a related field

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Kubernetes

Job description

Position Overview:

At affirm, giving people a clear, predictable way to pay over time, with no hidden fees or surprises. Identity Engineering owns systems for onboarding all consumers and managing authentication and verification journeys across affirm’s product surfaces. This role requires deep business, product and engineering context and owning high-availability, low-latency systems on critical paths. Affim is a remote-first company.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own and deliver quarterly goals, leading engineers through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, ensuring everyone is supported throughout delivery…
• Support peers and stakeholders in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design and analytics in ideation, articulating technical constraints, partnering on decisions considering risks and trade-offs…
• Proactively identify project, process, technology or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them…
• Support operations and availability of team artifacts by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating when needed, supporting “keep the lights on” and on-call efforts…
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership by setting and improving code review and design standards, advocating beyond the team through writing and tech talks…
• Help develop talent by providing feedback and guidance and leading by example…

Qualifications:

• 4+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin…
• Track record developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes…
• Experience defining a technical plan for a significant feature or system component with elegant, simple, extensible design; high-quality, easily understood code…
• Proficient at making significant changes in a large code base, with tools and practices to do so safely…
• Takes ownership of growth, proactively seeking feedback from team, manager, stakeholders…
• Strong verbal and written communication supporting collaboration with a global engineering team…
• Equivalent practical experience or Bachelor’s degree in a related field…