Staff Software Engineer, Backend – Cost Engineering

Affirm

Staff Cost Engineer managing cost visibility and optimization across Affirm's cloud infrastructure. Leading technical direction and cross-team collaboration in cost governance approaches.

Posted 7/30/2026full-timeRemote • 🇨🇦 CanadaLead💰 CA$181,000 - CA$241,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in designing and developing highly available distributed systems using Python or Kotlin, with a strong focus on operational excellence and team leadership. Proven ability to implement cost-visibility solutions and automate processes for scalable system management.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Backend System DesignAWS Cloud TechnologiesSQL Data ModelingAutomation with PythonTechnical Leadership

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

PythonKotlinAWSMySQLSparkKubernetesTerraformSQLCloud BillingCost Management

Soft Skills

Verbal CommunicationWritten CommunicationCollaborationFeedback IterationTeam Leadership

Tools & Technologies

FinOutCloudHealthKubecostSnowflakeCost & Usage Reports

Industry Keywords

Distributed SystemsTechnical StrategyOperational ProcessesCode Review StandardsOn-Call Operations

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDistributed SystemsKotlinKubernetesMySQLPythonSparkSQLTerraform

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Set 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 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 with a FinOps or cost-visibility platform (e.g., FinOut, CloudHealth, Kubecost, or an internal equivalent) — building dashboards, anomaly detection, or savings/waste reporting rather than just consuming them.
Track record of building automation or tooling (Python, Terraform, or similar) that turns a manual cost-review process into a scalable, self-service system — not just one-off analysis.
Hands-on experience with cloud billing/cost data at scale (AWS Cost & Usage Reports, Snowflake or similar warehouses) — comfortable writing complex SQL to model spend, allocate cost, and build unit-economics views from raw billing data.
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.
Growth and impact trajectory demonstrates that you have mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from your engineering and cross-functional peers.
Strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.

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