Staff Software Engineer: AI-Driven Bank Platform Architect

Affirm; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 204,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first

Equity rewards

Health coverage

Job summary

Affirm is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to anchor a small, AI-native engineering team building the bank's core systems. You will own architecture, standards, and technical strategy across cloud infra, data platforms, and banking integrations, while mentoring engineers and guiding vendor relationships.

You will drive end-to-end delivery of high‑stakes features, design resilient systems with clear failure domains, and push AI-enabled workflows as a multiplier for velocity and quality in a

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software engineering with staff-level ownership of high‑stakes systems.
• Experience owning ambiguous problems end-to-end through launch and operations.
• Fluent with AI-assisted development tools and AI workflows as a multiplier for code quality and velocity.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction and execute across teams without formal management.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication for executives, risk, compliance, and engineers.

Responsibilities

• Set the bank's technical direction across core surfaces: cloud infra, data platform, and bank/affirm Inc integration.
• Own the hardest problems end-to-end, designing systems with clear failure domains and runbooks.
• Establish patterns and standards to enable a small team to punch above its size.
• Ship AI-first capabilities and push the frontier of AI-leveraged engineering.
• Lead vendor selection, integration, and ongoing oversight of third‑party platforms across core stacks.
• Define integration boundaries with affirm Inc to ensure seamless product work within a regulated charter.
• Collaborate with Legal, Compliance, Risk, Finance, and Internal Audit to bake compliance into product from day one.
• Own operational posture: reliability, observability, alerting, runbooks, and disaster recovery for bank systems.
• Communicate strategy and tradeoffs clearly to executives, the Bank Board, and non‑engineering stakeholders.
• Mentor engineers, contribute to hiring, and raise the engineering bar as the team grows.

Skills

Staff-level experience

Ambiguity management

AI-enabled development

Technical leadership

Strong communication

Public cloud AWS

Tools

Terraform

Snowflake

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Job description

Affirm is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to anchor a small, AI-native engineering team building the bank's core systems. You will own architecture, standards, and technical strategy across cloud infra, data platforms, and banking integrations, while mentoring engineers and guiding vendor relationships.

You will drive end-to-end delivery of high‑stakes features, design resilient systems with clear failure domains, and push AI-enabled workflows as a multiplier for velocity and quality in a