Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Search)

Affirm; Washington (District of Columbia); Remote; USD 204,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity rewards

Monthly stipends for health, wellness,

Tech spending stipend

100% subsidized medical coverage

Dental and vision for dependents

Remote-first with flexibility

Job summary

Affim is hiring a senior backend engineering leader to set strategy for a high-scale team. You’ll drive architecture across Python/Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes, while enabling strong consumer experiences with React-based UI. Expect collaboration with product, design and analytics and responsibility for on-call readiness.

You’ll mentor engineers, define standards, and lead by example in a remote-first, fast-moving environment that values clarity and impact.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, developing and deploying backend systems at scale.
• Experience with Python or Kotlin and distributed systems.
• Strong collaboration across product, design and analytics teams.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a related field.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for your team on a year-long scale.
• Collaborate across product, design and analytics in lifecycle.
• Define technical solutions and operational processes.
• Own team operations, monitoring, triage, playbooks and on-call.
• Establish code Review and design standards across teams.
• Develop talent by mentoring and leading by example.

Skills

Backend systems design

Python

Kotlin

Distributed systems

React UI

Communication skills

Ambiguity handling

Engineering leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in related field

Tools

AWS

MySQL

Spark

Kubernetes

Job description

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