Staff Backend Observability Architect — Remote

Affirm, Inc.; Minneapolis (MN); Remote; USD 204,000 - 264,000; Full time

Job summary

AFFIRM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You’ll be the technical lead for telemetry, spend time hands-on, define the roadmap, mentor a team of six engineers, and partner with infrastructure and product teams.

You will own the telemetry pipeline architecture, design log sampling, shape how observability fits into AI-driven development, and set a year-long technical strategy, delivering high-impact improvements while maintaining reliability and cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with AWS, distributed systems, observability.
• Experience with telemetry systems (metrics/logs/traces) using OpenTelemetry, Kafka, Terraform.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of the telemetry pipeline for 200+ TB/day.
• Design log sampling strategies to reduce volume and cost.
• Shape observability within agentic development and AI coding agents.
• Set technical strategy for the team on a yearly horizon.
• Collaborate with product, design and analytics to ensure sustainability and manage risks.
• Drive adoption of platform standards across engineering teams.
• Ensure monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, testing and alerting are in place.
• Set code review and design standards and advocate them beyond the team.
• Mentor engineers and develop talent through feedback and example.

Skills

Backend design

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Flink

Kubernetes

OpenTelemetry

Kafka

Terraform

Education

Bachelor's degree (related field)

Tools

Terraform

Kafka

Kubernetes

Job description

AFFIRM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You’ll be the technical lead for telemetry, spend time hands-on, define the roadmap, mentor a team of six engineers, and partner with infrastructure and product teams.

You will own the telemetry pipeline architecture, design log sampling, shape how observability fits into AI-driven development, and set a year-long technical strategy, delivering high-impact improvements while maintaining reliability and cost efficiency.