Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Lakehouse Infra)

Affirm, Inc.; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a backend engineer to own and deliver quarterly goals for a data-driven infrastructure team in Palo Alto.

You will design, develop and operate highly available services at scale using Python or Kotlin, AWS, and Kubernetes, collaborating with product, design and analytics to balance risks and trade-offs. You will mentor teammates, improve code quality, and help shape the future of data platforms supporting checkout databases, batch processing, streaming, and BI.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes.
• Proficiency with Python or Kotlin and modern data infra patterns.
• Strong coding standards and ownership and ability to work across teams.

Responsibilities

• Own quarterly goals for the team and lead engineers through ambiguity to deliver.
• Collaborate with product, design & analytics to articulate constraints and risks.
• Identify issues early and lead efforts to resolve them.
• Support operations and on-call availability of team artifacts and metrics.
• Set and improve code review and design standards across the team.
• Develop talent by giving feedback and leading by example.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

Distributed systems

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Kubernetes

Job description

At affirm, we exist for the moments that matter—giving people a clear, predictable way to pay over time, with no hidden fees, no surprises, and no tradeoffs on what matters most.

The Data and Storage Services team is responsible for affirm's data infrastructure across OLTP and OLAP systems, spanning critical online checkout databases, batch orchestration, streaming infrastructure, event-driven frameworks, BI, analytics tooling, large-scale data platforms, and agentic data tools such as semantic layers and internal platform data applications.

The vision for the Lakehouse Infra team is to provide reliable, scalable, self-serve and affirm-optimized offline data access to enable ML, Product, and Financial Engineering success. Our team is responsible for hosting the data infrastructure that serves as a backbone for processing various business critical money and loan movement workloads at affirm across our batch and analytics ecosystems. affirm is growing rapidly and so is the need for reliable and high availability frameworks. If solving data lake 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 scaling relevant technologies such as Iceberg, Flink, Airflow, Spark, Kafka, Snowflake, and Terraform.
• 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.