Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Reliability Platform)

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. We help people pay over time for almost anything—with no late fees or surprises. Through advanced technology and analytics that look beyond FICO, we serve a broader population than other lenders.

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.

• Own and deliver quarterly goals for your team, leading engineers through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, and ensuring everyone is supported throughout delivery.
• Support peers and stakeholders in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics—participating in ideation, articulating technical constraints, and partnering on decisions that properly consider risks and trade-offs.
• Proactively identify project, process, technology or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them.
• 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.
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership by setting or improving code review and design standards, and advocating beyond your team through writing and tech talks.
• Help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, and leading by example.

• 4+ years of experience as a software engineer.
• Experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using technologies like Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes.
• 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.
• Experience defining a technical plan for delivery of a significant feature or system component with an elegant, simple and extensible design.
• Ability to write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
• Proficiency in making significant changes in a large code base, with a suite of tools and practices for doing so safely.
• Demonstrated ownership of your growth, proactively seeking feedback from team, manager, and stakeholders.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills for effective collaboration with a global engineering team.
• Equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

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: $195,000 - $255,000 USD.
• USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $173,000 - $233,000 USD.

Benefits highlights include: health care coverage (Affirm covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents), Flexible Spending Wallets (generous stipends for Technology, Food, various Lifestyle needs, and family forming expenses), time off (competitive vacation and holiday schedules), and ESPP (employee stock purchase plan enabling you to buy shares of Affirm at a discount).

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.

Affirm is committed to providing an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities, and will 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, Affirm will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance.