Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Infrastructure)

About the Role

The Engineering team at Affirm takes pride in building reliable, performant, and scalable solutions that touch every part of the business. From enabling new payment methods to ensuring platforms can scale to meet industry demands, the focus is on solving complex problems through exceptional engineering. The Trust Infra team specifically owns artifacts such as the secrets management system, authentication and authorization, cryptography, and certificate workloads within Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure.

What You Will Do

• Own and deliver quarterly goals for your team, ensuring alignment with Affirm's mission and objectives.
• Lead engineers through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, supporting them throughout delivery.
• Collaborate with product management, design, and analytics teams to participate in ideation, articulate technical constraints, and partner in decision-making.
• Proactively identify project, process, technology, or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them.
• Support the operations and availability of your team's artifacts by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating issues when necessary, and participating in on-call efforts.
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting or improving code review and design standards.
• Help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, leading by example.
• Ensure that the team's solutions are aligned with Affirm's overall strategy, focusing on scalability and security.
• Participate in the broader engineering community, sharing knowledge and best practices.

What We Are Looking For

• At least 4 years of experience in designing, developing, and launching backend systems at scale, with languages such as Python or Kotlin.
• Track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes.
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes resource management, Helm charts, and operator patterns, particularly centered around security workloads.
• Experience in defining a technical plan for the delivery of a significant feature or system component with an elegant, simple, and extensible design.
• Ability to write high-quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
• Proficiency in making significant changes in a large code base, with a suite of tools and practices that enable safe changes.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with a global engineering team.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and security best practices.
• Knowledge of agile development methodologies.

Nice to Have

• Experience with containerization and orchestration.
• Familiarity with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools.
• Knowledge of security frameworks and compliance standards.
• Experience in mentoring junior engineers.

Benefits and Perks

• Competitive salary and equity package.
• Opportunity to work on complex, high-impact projects.
• Comprehensive health insurance and benefits.
• Flexible PTO policy and remote work stipend.
• Access to professional development resources and training.
• Participation in a dynamic, global engineering community.
• Recognition and reward for outstanding performance.

• Ensure your resume and cover letter highlight specific examples of designing and developing backend systems at scale, especially those involving Kubernetes and security.
• Prepare to discuss your experience with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and how you handle scalability and security concerns.
• Showcase your ability to lead and mentor engineers, and provide examples of fostering a culture of quality and ownership within a team.
• Be ready to walk through your code design and development process, emphasizing simplicity, extensibility, and maintainability.
• When negotiating salary, consider not just the base pay but also the equity and benefits package, taking into account the company's growth stage and industry standards.
• Pay close attention to the company culture and values during the interview process, ensuring they align with your own professional goals and work style.
• Consider preparing questions about the team's dynamics, the typical career path for engineers within the company, and how feedback and growth opportunities are handled.