Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Reliability Platform)

📋 Job Overview

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.

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.

🏢 About Affirm

We’re looking for a Software Engineer to design and build a next-generation reliability platform for Affirm’s production systems. You’ll blend traditional distributed systems engineering with AI-assisted development to give teams a single place to understand, debug, and improve the health of their services.

This is a highly creative, hands-on role for someone who loves “vibe coding” — rapidly iterating, shipping, and refining with strong intuition— while still holding a very high bar for reliability, quality, and maintainability.

🎯 The Role

You will be responsible for owning and delivering quarterly goals for your team, leading engineers on your team through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, and ensuring that everyone is supported throughout delivery.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• You will support your peers and stakeholders in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics by participating in ideation, articulating technical constraints, and partnering on decisions that properly consider risks and trade-offs.
• You will proactively identify project, process, technology or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them.
• You will support the operations and availability of your team’s artifacts by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating when needed, and supporting “keep the lights on” & on-call efforts.
• You will foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting or improving 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.

📌 Required Qualifications

• You have a total of 4+ years of experience as a software engineer.
• You are experienced in designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale technologies like Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes.
• You have experience shipping web apps using declarative UI frameworks like React or Vue.
• Practical use of LLMs or AI frameworks to enhance automation and guidance with guardrails and citations
• You have experience defining a technical plan for the delivery of a significant feature or system component with an elegant, simple and extensible design. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
• You are proficient at making significant changes in a large code base, and have developed a suite of tools and practices that enable you and your team to do so safely.
• Your experience demonstrates that you take ownership of your growth, proactively seeking feedback from your team, your manager, and your stakeholders.
• 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.

🎁 Benefits

Base Pay Grade - N
Equity Grade - 9

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.)

• 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.

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

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.