Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Discovery / Search)
Join to apply for the Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Discovery / Search) role at Affirm
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Discovery / Search)
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Join to apply for the Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Discovery / Search) role at Affirm
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Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest.
Affirm is looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to define the technical direction and foster innovation across the Discovery Domain engineering organization. You’ll collaborate with engineering leaders, cross-functional teams, and stakeholders to build scalable, reliable, and high-performing solutions. You will help shape best practices, guide architectural choices, and drive the successful delivery of critical initiatives. This role requires high technical ability, leadership skills, strong cross-functional communication, and a creative mindset. You will be responsible for building large-scale distributed systems and developing the overall technology strategy for the Discovery domain within our engineering org.
The Discovery domain focuses on building features that attract new users, engage existing ones, encourage repeat use of Affirm products, and provide value to our customers within the app and marketplace. We own systems like search, read-optimized merchant and consumer data, marketing, and marketplace tooling that offer Affirm consumers a personalized and segmented way to discover and activate Affirm consumer-facing products.
What You'll Do
- Build a multi-year technical strategy for the Discovery domain, focusing on product roadmap, availability, and scale.
- Partner with Affirm’s architecture team to guide architectural choices within the Discovery domain.
- Influence product decisions, scope, and determine the right technical tradeoffs to deliver customer value quickly.
- Design, implement, and extend core platform services and APIs to enable new products and features.
- Architect and develop the next version of our data-processing pipelines.
- Create third-party developer APIs and tools.
- Analyze and debug performance issues across distributed services.
- Plan, design, and build core platform software and systems to scale with increasing users, features, business requirements, partners, and engineers.
What We Look For
- Passionate about Affirm's mission: "Deliver Honest Financial Products that improve lives".
- Solid CS fundamentals and fluency in a dynamically typed language, primarily Python, with a broad technology background.
- Enjoys cross-team collaboration, especially with product managers and designers.
- Humility and self-awareness to navigate the unknown.
- Attention to user experience details.
- Experience building real-time distributed web services, developing web application systems, and implementing highly available data storage.
- Practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Compensation and Benefits
Base Pay Grade: R
Equity Grade: 15
Our pay structure is transparent and based on location, experience, and skills. Total compensation may include equity, stipends for health, wellness, tech, and benefits like medical, dental, and vision coverage.
USA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT): $260,000 - $310,000 per year.
USA base pay range (other states): $232,000 - $282,000 per year.
Affirm is a remote-first company, allowing work from almost anywhere within the country, with some roles requiring occasional office presence.
Benefits
- Health care coverage with premiums covered for you and dependents.
- Flexible Spending Wallets for various expenses.
- Generous vacation and holiday policies.
- Employee stock purchase plan (ESPP).
Affirm is committed to an inclusive hiring process and provides accommodations for candidates with disabilities. By submitting your application, you consent to our privacy policy.
Additional Details
- Seniority level: Mid-Senior level
- Employment type: Full-time
- Job function: Engineering and IT