Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Discovery / Search)
Remote US
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.
Affirm is looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to take on a key role in defining the technical direction and foster innovation across the Discovery Domain engineering organization. You’ll collaborate with engineering leaders, cross-functional teams, and stakeholders to build scalable, reliable, and high-performing solutions. You'll help shape best practices, guide architectural choices, and drive the successful delivery of critical initiatives. This role requires a high level of technical ability, leadership skills, strong cross-functional communication, and a creative mindset. You will be responsible for building large-scale distributed systems, and developing the overall technology strategy for the Discovery domain within our engineering org.
Discovery domain focuses on building features that bring in new users, engage existing ones, encourage repeat use of Affirm products, and provide value to our customers within the app and marketplace. We own systems like search, read-optimized merchant and consumer data, marketing, and marketplace tooling that provide Affirm consumers a personalized and segmented way to discover and activate Affirm consumer-facing products.
What You'll Do
- Build a multi year technical strategy for Discovery domain focused on product roadmap, availability and scale.
- Partner with the architecture team at Affirm to guide architectural choices within the Discovery domain.
- Influence or make product decisions/scope and determine the right technical tradeoffs to deliver customer value quickly.
- Design, implement, and extend core platform services and APIs to enable new products and features to be built
- Architect and build the next version of our data-processing pipelines
- Create 3rd party developer APIs and tools
- Analyze/debug performance issues across distributed services
- Plan, design, and build our core platform software and systems to scale with an increasing number of users, features, business requirements, partners, and new engineers
What We Look For
- Passionate: Passionate about Affirm's Mission: "Deliver Honest Financial Products that improve lives"
- Technical: Solid CS fundamentals and fluency of a dynamically typed language. We primarily use Python, but members of our team have backgrounds in a wide range of technologies
- Collaborative: Enjoys cross team collaboration especially with product managers and designers
- Humble: You have the humility and self-awareness to understand and navigate the unknown
- User Focused: Cares about the details in the user experience
- Experienced: Background building real-time distributed web services, developing systems in web application frameworks and implementing highly available data storage
- This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Base Pay Grade - R
Equity Grade - 15
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 base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT) per year: $260,000 - $310,000
USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $232,000 - $282,000
#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.
By clicking "Submit Application," you acknowledge that you have read Affirm's Global Candidate Privacy Notice and hereby freely and unambiguously give informed consent to the collection, processing, use, and storage of your personal information as described therein.
ApplyJob Profile
Fully remote Limited number of roles remain office-based Remote US
Benefits/Perks100% subsidized medical 100% subsidized medical coverage Competitive benefits Competitive vacation Competitive vacation and holiday schedules Dental Dental and vision Employee stock purchase plan Equity Equity rewards ESPP Flexible Spending Flexible Spending Wallets Flexible work location Fully remote Generous stipends Health care coverage Inclusive interview experience Inclusive interview experience for all Medical coverage Monthly stipends Monthly stipends for health Monthly stipends for health and tech Remote-first company Remote First Environment Subsidized medical Subsidized medical coverage Subsidized medical/dental/vision Tech spending Time off Transparent pay structure Vision Wellness Wellness and tech spending
Tasks- Analyze performance issues
- Build scalable distributed systems
- Collaborate with cross functional teams
- Collaborate with engineering
- Create third-party developer APIs
- Define technical strategy for discovery domain
- Design
- Design data processing pipelines
- Develop core platform services and APIs
- Foster innovation
- Guide architectural choices
- Guide architectural decisions
- Implement high-availability solutions
- Plan and build scalable systems
API design APIs Architectural Choices Architecture Backend Benefits Best Practices Collaboration Communication Compensation Consumer data Cross-functional Collaboration Cross-functional Communication Cross Team Collaboration Data-driven decision making Data optimization Data Pipeline Architecture Data processing pipelines Data storage Data Storage Technologies Design Developer tools Distributed Systems Distributed Web Services Development Engineering Financial products High-Availability Systems Hiring Innovation Leadership Marketing Marketing Systems Marketplace Marketplace Tools Merchant Data Organization Performance analysis Performance Debugging Product Roadmap Planning Python R Real-Time Systems REST Scalable Infrastructure Scalable systems Search technologies Strategy System Debugging System design System scaling Technical Strategy Technical Strategy Development Technology Third-Party API Development User Experience User Experience Focused Web Web Application Frameworks Web Services
Experience5 years
EducationEngineering Equivalent Equivalent practical experience IT Related Field
TimezonesAmerica/Anchorage America/Chicago America/Denver America/Los_Angeles America/New_York Pacific/Honolulu UTC-10 UTC-5 UTC-6 UTC-7 UTC-8 UTC-9