Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Batch Infrastructure)

Affirm; St. Louis (MO); On-site; USD 173,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Equity (ESPP)

Time off

Tech stipends

Job summary

Affirm is seeking a senior backend engineer to own quarterly goals and guide a team through ambiguity, delivering scalable batch processing solutions on AWS/Kubernetes for ML, product, and finance workloads. You will collaborate across product, design and analytics to architect robust systems and ensure reliability.

You will drive code quality, participate in on-call rotations, and mentor teammates while shaping engineering standards and best practices.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes for highly available distributed systems.
• Experience with workflow orchestration tools (Airflow, Flyte, Prefect, Temporal, Luigi).
• Experience scaling frameworks like Spark/Flink on Kubernetes is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own and deliver quarterly goals for your team and lead engineers through ambiguity.
• Collaborate with product, design & analytics in ideation and decision-making.
• Identify and solve project, process, or technology issues; drive improvements.
• Monitor metrics and support on-call efforts to maintain reliability.
• Set and improve code review and design standards across the team.

Skills

Backend design

Team leadership

Systems thinking

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field

Tools

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Kubernetes

Airflow

Flyte

Prefect

Temporal

Luigi

Job description

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest.

The vision for the Batch Infra team @ Affirm team is to provide reliable, scalable, self-serve and Affim-optimized compute solution to enable ML, Product, and Financial Engineering success. Our team is responsible for building and maintaining compute platform that serves as a backbone for processing various Business critical batch workloads at Affirm through a wide suite of scheduled and on-demand compute solutions built on the cloud. Affirm is growing rapidly and so is the need for reliable and high availability frameworks. If solving infrastructure challenges at scale excites you, come join us!

What You’ll Do

• You will be responsible for owning and delivering quarterly goals for your team, leading engineers on your team through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, and ensuring that everyone is supported throughout delivery.
• You will support your peers and stakeholders in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics by participating in ideation, articulating technical constraints, and partnering on decisions that properly consider risks and trade-offs.
• You will proactively identify project, process, technology or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them.
• You will support the operations and availability of your team’s artifacts by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating when needed, and supporting “keep the lights on” & on-call efforts.
• You will foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting or improving code review and design standards for your team, and advocating for them beyond your team through your writing and tech talks.
• You will help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, and leading by example.

What We Look For

• You have 4+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
• You have a track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes.
• Experience building and managing Workflow Orchestration frameworks like Airflow, Flyte, Prefect, Temporal, Luigi, etc.
• Experience with or working knowledge for efficiently scaling frameworks like Spark/Flink for extremely large scale datasets on Kubernetes.
• You have experience defining a technical plan for the delivery of a significant feature or system component with an elegant, simple and extensible design. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
• You are proficient at making significant changes in a large code base, and have developed a suite of tools and practices that enable you and your team to do so safely.
• Your experience demonstrates that you take ownership of your growth, proactively seeking feedback from your team, your manager, and your stakeholders.
• You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.
• This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field

Base Pay Grade

- N

Equity Grade

- 9

Employees new to affirm typically come in at the start of the pay range. affirm focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure which is based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job-related skills.

Base pay is part of a total compensation package that may include equity rewards, monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents.)

USA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT) per year: $195,000 - $255,000

USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $173,000 - $233,000

Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company! The majority of our roles are remote and you can work almost anywhere within the country of employment. affirmers in proximal roles have the flexibility to work remotely, but will occasionally be required to work out of their assigned affirm office. A limited number of roles remain office-based due to the nature of their job responsibilities.

Benefits

• Health care coverage - affirm covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents
• Flexible Spending Wallets - generous stipends for spending on Technology, Food, various Lifestyle needs, and family forming expenses
• Time off - competitive vacation and holiday schedules allowing you to take time off to rest and recharge
• ESPP - An employee stock purchase plan enabling you to buy shares of affirm at a discount

We believe It’s On Us to provide an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of individualized support during the hiring process.

[For U.S. positions that could be performed in Los Angeles or San Francisco] Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, affirm will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.