Staff Software Engineer, Backend – Ledger Engineering

Affirm

Staff Software Engineer developing backend systems for financial products at Affirm. Collaborating on technical strategy and ensuring operational excellence within the engineering team.

Posted 7/20/2026full-timeRemote • California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $204,000 - $264,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

Use this summary to align your resume positioning with the role.

Demonstrates expertise in designing and developing highly available backend systems using Python or Kotlin, with a strong focus on operational processes and team collaboration. Proven ability to lead technical strategy, foster a culture of quality, and mentor team members in a fast-paced environment.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Backend System DesignAWSMySQLKubernetesFinancial Systems Experience

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

PythonKotlinDistributed Systems DevelopmentCode Review StandardsTechnical Strategy Definition

Soft Skills

Strong Verbal CommunicationStrong Written CommunicationTeam CollaborationMentoring

Tools & Technologies

SparkMonitoring ToolsAlerting SystemsTriage Rotations

Certifications & Qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree in Related Field

Industry Keywords

Data AccuracySystem ReliabilityLedgeringTreasury

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSDistributed SystemsKotlinKubernetesMySQLPythonSpark

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Responsible for setting technical strategy for your team on a year-long time scale, and help your team tie it together with critical, business-impacting projects.
Collaborate across teams in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics to ensure technical sustainability, risks and trade-offs are well understood and managed.
Act as a force-multiplier for your team through your definition and advocacy of technical solutions and operational processes.
Take ownership of your team’s operations and availability by ensuring you have the right monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, policies, testing and alerting in place to support “keep the lights on” & on-call efforts.
Foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting code review and design standards for your team, and advocating for them beyond your team through your writing and tech talks.
Help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, and leading by example.

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
Extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
Experience in financial systems, ledgering, treasury or adjacent domains where data accuracy and system reliability are critical.
Experience delivering major features, system components or deprecating existing functionality in a system through the definition of a technical and execution plan.
Write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
Thrive in ambiguity, and are comfortable moving from low level language idioms all the way to the architecture of large systems to understand how they work.
Strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.
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