Staff Backend Engineer, Global Databases Platform

Affirm; Detroit (MI); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Affirm is building a scalable, reliable data platform to power a broad set of online services. The Staff Software Engineer will own the technical roadmap for our Relational and Key-Value databases, shaping architecture and implementation choices that enable multi-region, high-performance storage at scale.

You will partner with product, infrastructure, and SRE teams to ensure data integrity, performance, and operational excellence, while mentoring engineers and elevating engineering standards

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with Python or Kotlin.
• Strong knowledge of AWS, MySQL, Spark, Kubernetes.
• 5+ years database expertise in Relational/Distributed SQL.
• Ability to produce high-quality, maintainable code.

Responsibilities

• Define a year-long technical roadmap for the databases team.
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and SRE.
• Build scalable datastore components for multi-region deployments.
• Develop control planes for management and migrations.
• Lead design reviews and establish coding standards.
• Foster talent and guide junior engineers.

Skills

Backend design

Distributed systems

AWS

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes

Python

Kotlin

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

ProxySQL

PgBouncer

Vitess

TiDB

Spark

Job description

Affirm is building a scalable, reliable data platform to power a broad set of online services. The Staff Software Engineer will own the technical roadmap for our Relational and Key-Value databases, shaping architecture and implementation choices that enable multi-region, high-performance storage at scale.

You will partner with product, infrastructure, and SRE teams to ensure data integrity, performance, and operational excellence, while mentoring engineers and elevating engineering standards