Staff Backend Engineer - Search & Discovery (Remote)

Affirm; Richmond (VA); On-site; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care coverage

Flexible Spending Wallets

Time off

ESPP

Job summary

Affirm is reinventing credit to offer a transparent, consumer-friendly pay-later experience. The role leads a team responsible for backend systems, guiding architecture, reliability, and collaboration with product, design, and analytics across the development lifecycle.

The ideal candidate brings many years building scalable services with Python or Kotlin, extensive AWS/MySQL/Spark/Kubernetes experience, and strong communication skills to drive cross-functional alignment in a remote-first

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale with Python or Kotlin
• Experience building highly available distributed systems (AWS, MySQL, Spark, Kubernetes)
• Experience delivering consumer experiences with React
• 2+ years in search or related recommendation engines
• Ability to define technical plans and write clear, reusable code
• Comfort with ambiguity and scaling large architectures
• Strong communication across global teams
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon
• Collaborate across product, design, and analytics to ensure sustainability and risk awareness
• Advocate for technical solutions and operational processes
• Own team operations, monitoring, playbooks and on-call readiness
• Establish code review and design standards beyond the team
• Mentor and develop team talent through guidance and example

Skills

Backend design

Distributed systems

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

React

Search engines

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

N/A

Job description

Affirm is reinventing credit to offer a transparent, consumer-friendly pay-later experience. The role leads a team responsible for backend systems, guiding architecture, reliability, and collaboration with product, design, and analytics across the development lifecycle.

The ideal candidate brings many years building scalable services with Python or Kotlin, extensive AWS/MySQL/Spark/Kubernetes experience, and strong communication skills to drive cross-functional alignment in a remote-first