Staff Backend Engineer - Databases Platform Leader

Affirm; Phoenix (AZ); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Affirm is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to drive the technical roadmap for our Databases platform, including relational and key-value stores. You will influence multi-region, highly available datastore solutions and guide teams across product, infrastructure, and SRE.

You will own operations, improve monitoring, and mentor engineers. The role demands 8+ years backend experience, strong cloud and database expertise, and a passion for building reliable, scalable data platforms that power

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, building, and launching backend systems at scale.
• Deep experience with Python or Kotlin and distributed services.
• 5+ years database expertise in MySQL, PostgreSQL, or distributed SQL like Vitess.

Responsibilities

• Set yearly technical strategy for the datastore team and align with business goals.
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and SRE teams to deliver scalable solutions.
• Design components of a multi-region datastore platform with high availability.
• Develop control planes for database management, migrations, and DR.
• Lead code reviews and establish design standards across teams.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

Backend design

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Job description

Affirm is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to drive the technical roadmap for our Databases platform, including relational and key-value stores. You will influence multi-region, highly available datastore solutions and guide teams across product, infrastructure, and SRE.

You will own operations, improve monitoring, and mentor engineers. The role demands 8+ years backend experience, strong cloud and database expertise, and a passion for building reliable, scalable data platforms that power