Staff Backend Software Engineer (Search)

Affirm, Inc.; New York (NY); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Spending Wallets

Remote-first Workforce

Generous Time Off

Health Benefits

Mental Healthcare

Parental Leave: 18 weeks + 4-week RTT

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a leader to set the technical strategy for a year-long roadmap, aligning with product management, design, and analytics to ensure sustainability and meaningful business impact.

You will drive architectural decisions, own operational processes, and promote high standards through code reviews and technical talks, while mentoring teammates and growing talent across the team.

Qualifications

• Experience with search or related recommendation engines.
• Strong verbal and written communication with global teams.
• Extensive track record in designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for your team on a year-long horizon.
• Collaborate with product, design & analytics across the lifecycle to manage trade-offs and risks.
• Own operations: monitoring, triage, playbooks, testing and on-call readiness.
• Set code review and design standards and advocate for them beyond your team.

Skills

Search/rec engines

Communication skills

Backend system design

Ambiguity tolerance

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Job description

• You will be responsible for setting technical strategy for your team on a year-long time scale, and help your team tie it together with critical, business-impacting projects
• You will collaborate across teams in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics to ensure technical sustainability, risks and trade-offs are well understood and managed
• You will act as a force-multiplier for your team through your definition and advocacy of technical solutions and operational processes
• You take ownership of your team's operations and availability by ensuring you have the right monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, policies, testing and alerting in place to support "keep the lights on" & on-call efforts
• You will foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting code review and design standards for your team, and advocating for them beyond your team through your writing and tech talks
• You will help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, and leading by example

Benefits

• Compensation: We have a simple, flexible, and transparent remote-first compensation structure so you can make the best decisions for yourself and your family
• Spending Wallets: Access tech, food, lifestyle, and family planning wallets for your expenses
• Supportive Communities: Get involved with our employee resource groups and community groups
• Remote-first Workforce: If your role is remote, you can set up shop anywhere in your home country
• Generous Time Off: Take the time you need when life happens
• Health Benefits: Get a plan that fits your needs
• Mental Healthcare: Take care of your mind with great mental health programs
• Parental Leave: Birth and non-birth parents get 18 weeks' paid leave. Plus, a 4-week return-to-work transition program, at full base pay
• Away Days: We offer 20 company-wide paid days off- which help our teams collectively pause to recharge
• Learning & Development: Engage in exciting learning programs to level up your growth

• You have 2+ years of experience working in search or related recommendation engines
• You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team
• You have 8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin
• You have experience developing consumer experiences using UI frameworks like React
• You have an extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes
• You have experience delivering major features, system components or deprecating existing functionality in a system through the definition of a technical and execution plan. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others
• You thrive in ambiguity, and are comfortable moving from low level language idioms all the way to the architecture of large systems to understand how they work
• Your growth and impact trajectory demonstrates that you have mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from your engineering and cross-functional peers
• This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor's degree in a related field