Staff Backend Engineer, Observability Lead (Remote)

Affirm, Inc.; Denver (CO); Remote; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage for you and family

Remote-first with flexible onsite

Stock purchase plan (ESPP)

Stipends for tech setup

Generous PTO

Job summary

AFFIRM, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You will own the telemetry pipeline architecture, drive cross‑functional initiatives, and mentor a team of engineers to build scalable, observable systems within a remote-first environment.

You will shape sampling strategies, promote standards for reliability and cost efficiency, and partner with product teams to ensure instrumentation supports incident response and product goals.

Qualifications

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Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of AFFIRM’s telemetry pipeline, balancing reliability, query performance, and cost at 200+ TB/day.
• Design log sampling strategies to significantly reduce volume and cost without losing signals during incidents.
• Shape how observability fits into agentic development to ensure AI coding agents catch instrumentation gaps before code ships.
• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon and tie it to business-impacting projects.
• Collaborate with product management, design, and analytics to ensure sustainability, risks, and trade-offs are understood.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

Backend design

Distributed systems

Observability

Mentoring

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in a related field

Tools

OpenTelemetry

Kafka

Terraform

AWS

MySQL

Flink

Kubernetes

Job description

AFFIRM, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You will own the telemetry pipeline architecture, drive cross‑functional initiatives, and mentor a team of engineers to build scalable, observable systems within a remote-first environment.

You will shape sampling strategies, promote standards for reliability and cost efficiency, and partner with product teams to ensure instrumentation supports incident response and product goals.