Staff Software Engineer, Backend – Lake Analytics Platform

Affirm

Staff Software Engineer specializing in Lakehouse Platform architecture and scalable analytical data storage at Affirm. Collaborating with cross-functional teams to drive technical strategy and innovation in data infrastructure.

Posted 7/13/2026full-timeRemote • California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $204,000 - $290,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in architecting and implementing scalable data infrastructure solutions, with a strong focus on data governance, access control, and performance optimization. Proven ability to lead teams in developing analytical capabilities and fostering a culture of operational excellence and continuous learning.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Technical LeadershipSnowflake Data WarehouseApache IcebergData GovernancePython Programming

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Data Infrastructure EngineeringData ModelingQuery OptimizationCI/CD PracticesAnalytical Data WarehousingData MaskingProduction-Quality SystemsCloud-Native ArchitecturesTesting FrameworksCost Management

Soft Skills

MentoringCollaborationContinuous LearningInclusive CultureOperational Excellence

Tools & Technologies

SnowflakeApache SparkTerraformDbtCloud-Native Storage

Industry Keywords

Lakehouse ArchitectureData GovernancePrivacy EngineeringAnalytical Compute EnginesSemantic Layers

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

ApacheCloudPythonSparkSQLTerraform

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Influence technical strategy: Define and drive the long-term technical roadmap for Affirm’s Lakehouse Platform across Apache Iceberg, Spark, Snowflake, and cloud-native storage, balancing scalability, reliability, governance, performance, and cost.
Design and develop: Architect and implement platform capabilities that make analytical data secure, trustworthy, discoverable, and easy to use across Affirm’s engineering, analytics, machine learning, and business teams.
Strengthen governance and access controls: Design and operate secure, auditable data access capabilities across Snowflake and the lakehouse platform, including RBAC, dynamic data masking, cataloging, lineage, classification, and privacy policy enforcement.
Improve analytics engineering foundations: Partner with Analytics Engineering to evolve data modeling, transformation pipelines, testing frameworks, documentation standards, and data quality practices that enable trustworthy self-service analytics.
Operate at scale: Establish best practices for lakehouse operations, including schema evolution, table maintenance, partitioning, compaction, observability, incident response, production support, and readiness for on-call operations.
Optimize performance and cost: Identify and execute improvements across analytical compute and storage, including Snowflake warehouse tuning, query optimization, storage layout, lifecycle management, cost attribution, and operational efficiency.
Collaborate cross-functionally: Partner with Infrastructure, Lakehouse Analytics, Analytics Engineering, Machine Learning, BI, Product Engineering, and SRE to translate stakeholder needs into durable platform architecture.
Innovate: Stay ahead of industry trends in lakehouse architecture, open table formats, analytical compute engines, data governance, privacy engineering, semantic layers, agentic data tools, and AI-ready data infrastructure.
Build teams: Mentor engineers, raise technical quality, and foster an inclusive culture of design rigor, operational excellence, and continuous learning.

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years of experience in software engineering, data infrastructure, or data platform engineering, with 2+ years of technical leadership responsibilities.
Hands-on experience leading teams to build critical data infrastructure.
Hands-on experience with Snowflake or comparable analytical data warehouses, including access control, data masking, query optimization, and cost management.
Strong experience with Apache Iceberg, Spark, and cloud-native data lake architectures.
Experience with dbt or equivalent transformation frameworks, including data modeling, testing, documentation, and CI/CD practices.
Proficiency in Python, SQL, or JVM-based languages, with a strong emphasis on clean, maintainable, production-quality systems.
Familiarity with Terraform or similar automation tools for managing data infrastructure.
This position requires 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