Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Cost Engineering)

Affirm, Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 129,000 - 172,000; Full time

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking a Staff Cost Engineer to shape cost governance across cloud and AI infra. The role interfaces with finance, engineering and data teams to turn spend questions into durable, self-service tooling. You’ll influence cost strategy with leaders and drive cost visibility across a multi-cloud footprint.

You will help design tooling for anomaly detection and dashboards, set technical direction, and lead by example in a small, high-impact team that values ownership and quality.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using Python or Kotlin.
• Extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Experience with a FinOps or cost-visibility platform (e.g., FinOut, CloudHealth, Kubecost, or internal equivalent).
• Proven automation tooling (Python, Terraform) turning cost-review into a self-service system.
• Hands-on experience with cloud billing data at scale; skilled in SQL to model spend and allocate cost.
• Delivered major features or deprecations with a clear technical/exec plan and high-quality code.
• Thrives in ambiguity, from low-level idioms to large-system architecture.
• Proven ability to gather and act on feedback from peers and stakeholders.
• Strong verbal and written communication for global collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon.
• Collaborate with product, design, analytics to ensure sustainability and manage risks.
• Advocate for scalable technical solutions and operational processes.
• Ensure monitoring, on-call readiness, playbooks and alerting for reliability.
• Establish coding standards and promote them beyond the team.
• Mentor team members with feedback and example work.

Skills

Backend design

Python

Kotlin

SQL

Automation tooling

Communication skills

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest.

Engineering owns cost visibility and optimization across affirm's cloud and AI infrastructure. We're the team that tells the business what it's spending, why it's changing, and what to do about it - from AWS resource waste and tagging strategy to the newer frontier of AI/LLM spend across the company's growing set of AI tools. We treat cost anomalies with the same rigor as production incidents: we've built a severity framework (mirroring affirm's SEV0-3 incident model but mapped to dollar impact) with defined detection sources, TTD/TTR metrics, and escalation paths, and we operate a clear RACI with partner orgs - we own visibility and alerting, and partner teams own remediation (at times we may dig in deep and own remediation too!), so accountability never gets diffuse.

As a Staff Cost Engineer, you'll operate at the intersection of finance, infrastructure, and data engineering - designing the tooling, automation, and processes that scale cost governance across a fast-growing multi-cloud and multi-AI-vendor footprint. You'll set technical direction for the team, influence cost strategy with infra and platform leaders across the org, and turn ambiguous "why did spend spike" questions into durable systems and self-service tooling. We're a small, high-leverage team - you'll have outsized influence on how affirm thinks about cost.

What You'll Do

• 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, polcities, 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.

What We Look For

• You have 8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
• You have an extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• Experience with a FinOps or cost-visibility platform (e.g., FinOut, CloudHealth, Kubecost, or an internal equivalent) - building dashboards, anomaly detection, or savings/waste reporting rather than just consuming them.
• Track record of building automation or tooling (Python, Terraform, or similar) that turns a manual cost-review process into a scalable, self-service system - not just one-off analysis.
• Hands-on experience with cloud billing/cost data at scale (AWS Cost & Usage Reports, Snowflake or similar warehouses) - comfortable writing complex SQL to model spend, allocate cost, and build unit-economics views from raw billing data.
• 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.
• You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.

Pay Grade - P
Equity Grade - 7

Employees new to affirm typically come in at the start of the pay range. affirm focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure which is based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job-related skills.

Base pay is part of a total compensation package that may include monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents). In addition, the employees may be eligible for equity rewards offered by affirm Holdings, Inc. (parent company).

CAN base pay range per year: CAD $181,000 - $241,000.

Location - Remote Canada
This remote role is open only to candidates residing in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, or Saskatchewan.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

#LI Remote

Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company! The majority of our roles are remote and you can work almost anywhere within the country of employment. affirmers in proximal roles have the flexibility to work remotely, but will occasionally be required to work out of their assigned affirm office. A limited number of roles remain office-based due to the nature of their job responsibilities.

We're extremely proud to offer competitive benefits that are anchored to our core value of people come first. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

• Health care coverage - affirm covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents
• Flexible Spending Wallets - generous stipends for spending on Technology, Food, various Lifestyle needs, and family forming expenses
• Time off - competitive vacation and holiday schedules allowing you to take time off to rest and recharge
• ESPP - An employee stock purchase plan enabling you to buy shares of affirm at a discount

We believe It's On Us to provide an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of individualized support during the hiring process.

[For U.S. positions that could be performed in Los Angeles or San Francisco] Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, affirm will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.