Staff Backend Engineer - Distributed Databases Remote

Affirm; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 204,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care coverage

Flexible Spending Wallets

Time off

ESPP

Job summary

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without hidden fees or compounding interest. The Data and Storage Services team maintains scalable data infrastructure across OLTP and OLAP, with MySQL, DynamoDB, Spark, and Kubernetes.

We are looking for a highly skilled Staff Software Engineer to drive the technical roadmap for Databases (Relational and KeyValue), influence cross-team initiatives, and ensure reliability,

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing, launching backend systems at scale using Python or Kotlin.
• 5+ years hands-on database expertise with Relational or Distributed SQL (MySQL, PostgreSQL, TiDB/Vitess) and performance tuning.
• Experience with AWS, MySQL, Spark, Kubernetes and cloud-based databases.
• Ability to deliver major features with clear technical plans and high-quality code.
• Comfort with ambiguity and designing large-scale architectures.
• Strong communication skills for collaboration across global teams.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon.
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and SRE teams.
• Design and build components of a scalable datastore platform across relational and key-value stores.
• Develop control planes for self-service databases at scale, including migrations and DR.
• Work with product management, design and analytics to ensure sustainability and risk management.
• Drive code quality, design standards, and security practices across the team.
• Mentor and grow team members through feedback and example.

Skills

Backend design

Distributed systems

Python/Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Database optimization

architecture

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

ProxySQL

RDS Proxy

PgBouncer

Job description

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without hidden fees or compounding interest. The Data and Storage Services team maintains scalable data infrastructure across OLTP and OLAP, with MySQL, DynamoDB, Spark, and Kubernetes.

We are looking for a highly skilled Staff Software Engineer to drive the technical roadmap for Databases (Relational and KeyValue), influence cross-team initiatives, and ensure reliability,