Staff Backend Observability Lead - Telemetry & Scale

Affirm, Inc.; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); Remote; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% subsidized health coverage

Monthly tech & health stipends

Flexible time off

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

AFFIRM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You’ll own the telemetry architecture, guide a six-person team, and partner with infrastructure and product teams to improve reliability at scale.

You’ll design log sampling, shape agentic development, and drive cross-functional initiatives across the product lifecycle, while mentoring engineers and setting high standards for code and design.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with Python or Kotlin.
• Advanced knowledge of AWS, MySQL, Flink and Kubernetes.
• Experience building high-volume telemetry systems with OpenTelemetry, Kafka and Terraform.
• Strong observability practices, SLOs and sampling.
• Proven ability to drive platform standard adoption.
• Clear written and verbal communication.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of the telemetry pipeline at 200+ TB/day.
• Design log sampling to cut volume and cost without losing signals.
• Define observability integration into agentic development.
• Set technical strategy and align with cross-functional projects.
• Collaborate across product management, design and analytics.
• Advocate for scalable technical solutions and operational processes.
• Own team operations, monitoring, playbooks and on-call readiness.
• Establish code review and design standards beyond the team.
• Mentor engineers and develop team talent.

Skills

Backend design

Distributed systems

Python or Kotlin

Observability

Communication

Platform alignment

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Flink

Kubernetes

OpenTelemetry

Kafka

Terraform

Job description

AFFIRM is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead Observability. You’ll own the telemetry architecture, guide a six-person team, and partner with infrastructure and product teams to improve reliability at scale.

You’ll design log sampling, shape agentic development, and drive cross-functional initiatives across the product lifecycle, while mentoring engineers and setting high standards for code and design.