
Staff Software Engineer, Backend – Growth Platform
Affirm
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Remote
Location: United States
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Salary
💰 $200,000 - $250,000 per year
Job Level
About the role
- Responsible for setting technical strategy for your team on a year-long time scale, owning backend platforms that power incentives and growth initiatives.
- Collaborate with product management, analytics, and partner teams to shape technical direction for incentive systems.
- Act as a force-multiplier by defining platform abstractions, APIs, and architectural patterns.
- Take ownership of your team’s operations and availability by ensuring robust monitoring, alerting, playbooks, and on-call practices.
- Foster a culture of quality and ownership by setting design and code review standards.
- Help develop talent on your team by providing actionable feedback, technical guidance, and leadership.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
- An extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies such as AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes.
- Experience building or evolving shared backend platforms that support Rewards, Loyalty, Incentives, Experimentation, or other growth-critical workflows used by multiple product teams.
- Led complex technical initiatives that required cross-team alignment, long-term architectural thinking, and influence without direct authority.
- Experience delivering major features, system components, or deprecating existing functionality through a clear technical plan.
- Thrives in ambiguity, comfortable moving from low-level language idioms to large-scale systems architecture.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with a global engineering organization.
- This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Benefits
- 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
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard skills
PythonKotlinbackend systemsdistributed systemsAPIsarchitectural patternsmonitoringalertingcode reviewtechnical strategy
Soft skills
leadershipcollaborationcommunicationfeedbackownershipquality assuranceinfluenceproblem-solvingadaptabilitymentorship
Certifications
Bachelor's degree