Staff Backend Engineer - Scalable Datastore Platform

Affirm; Portland (OR); On-site; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Affirm is seeking a highly experienced Staff Software Engineer to lead the datastore platform for relational and key-value storage. You will define the technical strategy, drive scalable DB solutions, and partner with product, infrastructure, and SRE teams to ensure reliability and performance across multi-region deployments.

You should have 8+ years in backend design and 5+ years in database expertise, with strong Python or Kotlin skills and cloud-native experience.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend design and development experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on database expertise (Relational/Distributed SQL).
• Experience with AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes.
• Strong communication and collaboration across teams.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the datastore platform and roadmap.
• Design and build scalable datastore components across multi-region deployments.
• Lead migrations, performance tuning, and operational reliability.
• Collaborate with product, infra, and SRE to ensure sustainability and risk management.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Job description

Affirm is seeking a highly experienced Staff Software Engineer to lead the datastore platform for relational and key-value storage. You will define the technical strategy, drive scalable DB solutions, and partner with product, infrastructure, and SRE teams to ensure reliability and performance across multi-region deployments.

You should have 8+ years in backend design and 5+ years in database expertise, with strong Python or Kotlin skills and cloud-native experience.