Staff Backend Engineer — Search & Discovery (Remote-first)

Affirm; Charlotte (NC); Remote; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% subsidized medical coverage

Dental and vision coverage for you and

Remote-first with flexibility

Job summary

Affirm in the United States is seeking a senior backend engineer to design, develop, and launch scalable backend systems using Python or Kotlin, with emphasis on reliability and performance.

You will own technical strategy for your team, establish operational standards, and drive quality through code reviews and architecture decisions while collaborating across product, design, and analytics. This remote-first role values strong communication and the ability to operate across time zones.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
• Extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Experience developing consumer experiences using UI frameworks like React.
• 2+ years of experience working in search or related recommendation engines.
• Ability to define technical and execution plans and write high-quality, maintainable code.
• Thrives in ambiguity and can reason from low-level languages to system architecture.
• Evidence of gathering and iterating on feedback from engineering and cross-functional peers.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills for collaborating with a global engineering team.
• Equivalency/practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long time scale and align with business-impacting projects.
• Collaborate across product management, design, and analytics to ensure sustainability, risks, and trade-offs are understood.
• Be a force-multiplier by defining and advocating technical solutions and operational processes.
• Own the team’s operations and availability with monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks and testing.
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership through code reviews and design standards.
• Develop talent by providing feedback and leading by example.

Skills

Python

Kotlin

Distributed systems

Team leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

React

Job description

Affirm in the United States is seeking a senior backend engineer to design, develop, and launch scalable backend systems using Python or Kotlin, with emphasis on reliability and performance.

You will own technical strategy for your team, establish operational standards, and drive quality through code reviews and architecture decisions while collaborating across product, design, and analytics. This remote-first role values strong communication and the ability to operate across time zones.