Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Search)

Affirm; San Jose (CA); Remoto; USD 204.000 - 290.000; Tempo pieno

Vantaggi offerti da questo lavoro

Equity

Health stipend

Tech stipend

Health, dental & vision for you and up

Remote-first culture

Descrizione del lavoro

Affim is building a global backend platform to power discovery and shopping experiences at scale. You will set the technical strategy for your team across a year-long horizon, partnering with product management, design, and analytics to ensure sustainable, measurable impact.

You will own operations, guide code quality, and help develop talent by mentoring teammates. The role emphasizes shipping major features with a clear execution plan, working across a distributed, on-call culture, and driving

Competenze

• 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using Python or Kotlin.
• Experience with highly available distributed systems (AWS, MySQL, Spark, Kubernetes).
• Experience delivering major features and deprecating functionality with a technical plan.
• Strong communication across a global engineering team.

Mansioni

• Set technical strategy for your team on a year-long horizon and align with business goals.
• Collaborate across product, design and analytics to ensure sustainable, trade-off aware solutions.
• Define and advocate technical solutions and operational processes to improve reliability.
• Own team operations, availability, monitoring, on-call, and incident response.
• Promote code quality, design standards, and cultivate talent through mentorship.

Conoscenze

Backend development

Distributed systems

React

Team collaboration

Search/Recommendations

Python/Kotlin

Formazione

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Strumenti

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

React

Descrizione del lavoro

At Affim, 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.

As we build Affim's advertising platform and evolve Marketplace into a best in class shopping destination, the ability to route and discover is one of the greatest levers for consumer experiences. Search is one of the highest impact surfaces, and we are building a new team that will own not just the recommendations and search experiences, but also explore opportunities to improve customer experience, monetization, and merchant value. This team will help make Affim the definitive destination consumers turn to for discovery, understanding, comparing, and shopping through Affim, and will also lay the foundation for an agentic platform.

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, 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.

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.
• You have experience developing consumer experiences using UI frameworks like React
• You have 2+ years of experience working in search or related recommendation engines
• 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 - P

Equity Grade - 13

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 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 Pacific base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT): $230,000 - $290,000

USA Sapphire base pay range (all other U.S. states): $204,00 - $264,000

Remote-first with flexibility built in

Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company. Most roles can be done from