Staff Backend Engineer, Observability Lead (Remote)

Affirm, Inc.; Austin (TX); Remote; USD 204,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage for you and dependents

Tech setup stipends

Flexible time off

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

AFFIRM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You’ll spend significant time coding while shaping the roadmap, mentoring a team of engineers, and partnering with infrastructure and product teams to ensure reliable telemetry across services.

You will own the architecture of AFFIRM’s telemetry pipeline, drive log sampling strategies, and advance agentic development with AI-assisted code reviews. This role emphasizes scale, performance, and cost-aware design.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Extensive experience with distributed systems and observability.
• Experience with OpenTelemetry, Kafka, Terraform and related tooling.

Responsibilities

• Own the telemetry pipeline architecture for 200+ TB/day, balancing reliability, performance, and cost.
• Design log sampling strategies to reduce volume and cost while preserving signal.
• Shape how observability fits into agentic development and AI-assisted coding reviews.
• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon and align with business goals.
• Collaborate with product, design, and analytics to ensure maintainability and risk awareness.

Skills

Backend design

Distributed systems

Python or Kotlin

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Flink

Kubernetes

OpenTelemetry

Kafka

Terraform

Job description

AFFIRM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You’ll spend significant time coding while shaping the roadmap, mentoring a team of engineers, and partnering with infrastructure and product teams to ensure reliable telemetry across services.

You will own the architecture of AFFIRM’s telemetry pipeline, drive log sampling strategies, and advance agentic development with AI-assisted code reviews. This role emphasizes scale, performance, and cost-aware design.