Senior Software Engineer, Backend – Lake Analytics Platform

Affirm

Senior Software Engineer developing backend capabilities for Affirm's data analytics platform. Building reliable systems for data applications and collaborating across teams to enhance platform functionality.

Posted 7/10/2026full-timeRemote • California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $173,000 - $255,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in building and operating cloud analytical data platforms, with a strong focus on access control, data governance, and automation. Proficient in developing integrations and enhancing platform capabilities to support self-service infrastructure and operational excellence.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Cloud Analytical Data Platform ExperienceContainerized Application DeploymentCI/CD Pipeline DesignPython and SQL ProficiencyStrong Communication Skills

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Access Control DesignData MaskingCompute ManagementCost OptimizationDocker Image ManagementREST APIsOAuth/OIDCWebhook IngestionSecrets ManagementOperational Readiness

Soft Skills

Strong Written CommunicationEffective Collaboration

Tools & Technologies

SnowflakeDatabricksBigQueryBuildkiteGitHub Actions

Certifications & Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Related Field

Industry Keywords

Data GovernanceSelf-Service InfrastructureOperational PatternsTelemetryIncident Response

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

BigQueryCloudDockerPythonSQL

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Build and operate core platform capabilities: Design and implement platform features that enable engineers across Affirm to build, deploy, and operate data applications at scale — covering automated provisioning, deploy pipelines, access control, service lifecycle management, and reliability tooling.
Develop integrations: Build and maintain integrations between the platform and internal systems — CI/CD pipelines, identity and secrets management, external APIs, and event-driven hooks — so that application teams have secure, reliable, and self-service access to the tools they need.
Strengthen data access and governance: Design and operate secure data access patterns across the platform's analytical infrastructure, including RBAC, managed-access schemas, dynamic data masking, secure views, and cross-database grants that make platform data trustworthy without creating operational bottlenecks.
Automate toil and unlock self-service: Identify recurring support patterns — access provisioning, data pipeline failures, service health management, secrets management — and build the automation and tooling to make them self-service for platform users, eliminating manual admin work.
Improve observability and incident response: Build telemetry, alerting, and log infrastructure so platform teams and application owners can diagnose and resolve issues independently. Establish runbooks and operational patterns that reduce blast radius and recovery time.
Support platform operations: Participate in on-call coverage, triage production incidents across platform services and the applications that run on them, and execute platform-level maintenance with care for the engineers and workflows that depend on the platform.
Contribute to the emerging platform roadmap: Help design and build next-generation platform capabilities — semantic layer infrastructure, agentic application patterns, and AI-native data tooling — as the platform grows to support Affirm's most ambitious data use cases.
Raise the engineering bar: Set and hold high standards in code review, design, operational readiness, and incident follow-through. Help establish patterns that other contributors can follow and build on.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Analytical Data Platform Depth: Hands-on experience operating a cloud analytical data platform (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, or similar), including access control design, data masking and governance, compute management, and cost optimization.
Container and Deployment Expertise: Experience building and operating containerized applications — Docker image management, CI/CD pipeline design (Buildkite, GitHub Actions, or similar), deployment automation, and rollout practices for production services.
Platform and Developer Tooling: Experience building internal platforms, developer tooling, or self-service infrastructure that makes other engineers more productive.
Integrations and Networking: Comfort building integrations between systems — REST APIs, OAuth/OIDC, webhook ingestion, secrets management, egress networking configuration, and identity/SSO patterns in a managed cloud environment.
Backend Engineering Fundamentals: Proficiency in Python and SQL for building reliable, maintainable platform services.
Operational Ownership: Strong operational instincts — you instrument your systems, write runbooks, own your alerts, and treat on-call burden as a design constraint from day one.
Agentic and AI-Ready Data Tools: Familiarity with or interest in semantic layer design, LLM-integrated platform workflows, and agentic data tools.
Communication and Collaboration: Strong written and verbal communication. You're effective working across application teams, security, infrastructure, and platform users to scope, prioritize, and deliver — especially when requirements are ambiguous.
This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor's degree in a related field.

Benefits

Comp & perks

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