Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Observability)

Affirm; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 204,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Tech stipends

Flexible time off

ESPP

Job summary

Affirm, Inc. is seeking an experienced backend engineer to own the telemetry pipeline architecture and drive observability across a large-scale platform.

You will design sampling strategies, shape how observability fits into agentic development, and lead technical strategy for the team over a year-long horizon. You will collaborate across product, design, and analytics to ensure sustainability and measured risk.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale.
• Experience with AWS, MySQL, Flink and Kubernetes.
• Built or operated high-volume telemetry systems using OpenTelemetry, Kafka and Terraform.
• Strong view on observability practices: structured and wide events, sampling, cardinality, and SLOs.
• Driven adoption of a platform standard across engineering teams via tooling and engagement.
• Able to move from low level language idioms to architecture of large systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of affirm's telemetry pipeline, balancing reliability, query performance, and cost at 200+ TB/day.
• Design log sampling strategies to reduce volume and cost without losing signal during incidents.
• Shape observability within agentic development for AI coding agents and code review.
• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long horizon and align with business projects.
• Collaborate across product, design and analytics for sustainability, risks and trade-offs.
• Act as a force-multiplier by defining and advocating technical solutions and processes.
• Own team operations and availability with monitoring, on-call rotations, playbooks and testing.
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership through code review standards and mentoring.

Skills

Backend systems

Python/Kotlin

Distributed systems

AWS

Kubernetes

OpenTelemetry

SLOs

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

MySQL

Flink

Kafka

Terraform

OpenTelemetry

Job description

At affirm, we exist for the moments that matter—giving people a clear, predictable way to pay over time, with no hidden fees, no surprises, and no tradeoffs on what matters most.

The Observability team builds the platform every affirm engineer relies on to understand the behavior and performance of our systems. Our platform ingests 200+ TB/day of metrics, logs, and traces from hundreds of services across 80+ Kubernetes clusters, and when a user's checkout fails, our data is how engineers find out why. Over the next year, we're moving to wide events, with one context-rich event per request, improving the signal-to-noise ratio to make debugging faster. We're also introducing log sampling and building observability best practices into agentic development and code review, so that AI-assisted code is well instrumented by default.

What You'll Do

• You will own the architecture of affirm's telemetry pipeline, balancing reliability, query performance, and cost at 200+ TB/day.
• You will design log sampling strategies that significantly reduce volume and cost without losing the signal engineers need during incidents.
• You will shape how observability fits into agentic development, so that AI coding agents and code review catch instrumentation gaps before code ships.
• 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, Flink and Kubernetes.
• You have built or operated high-volume telemetry systems (metrics, logs, and/or traces) using technologies like OpenTelemetry, Kafka, and Terraform.
• You have a well-informed point of view on modern observability practices such as structured and wide events, sampling, cardinality management, and SLOs.
• You have driven adoption of a platform standard across many engineering teams, through both tooling and engagement.
• 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.
• This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor's degree in a related field.

Base Pay Grade - PEquity Grade - 13Employees 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 equity rewards, monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents.)USA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT): $230,000 - $290,000USA base pay range (all other U.S. states): $204,000 - $264,000#LI-RemoteRemote-first with flexibility built in affirm is proud to be a remote-first company. Most roles can be done from almost anywhere within the country of employment. Some positions may occasionally require in-person work at an affirm office, and a few are office-based due to the nature of the work. All new hires will be invited to attend an in-person onboarding experience.

Benefits designed for you

• Health coverage at no cost: We cover 100% of premiums for employees and their dependents.
• Spending stipends: Monthly stipends support your tech setup, and the ability to choose health and wellness options that are right for you.
• Time off to recharge: Flexible time off and generous holiday calendars help you rest when you need to.
• Own a piece of what you build: Our employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) lets you buy affirm stock at a discount.

We're committed to providing an inclusive interview process, including accommodations for candidates with disabilities. If you need support, we're happy to help.

For positions based in San Francisco or Los Angeles: affirm considers qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, as required by law.