Affirm

Senior Manager, Category Narrative

Affirm$173K — $255K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Finance & Insurance
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 12+ years in narrative strategy, communications, policy, or financial services.
  • Strong editorial instincts and ability to craft messaging for diverse audiences.
  • Experience in regulated communication environments, particularly in financial services.
  • Adept at aligning cross-functional stakeholders with varying interests.
  • Proven ability to translate complex financial concepts into accessible language.
  • Comfortable in policy conversations regarding credit and payments.
  • A belief in clarity and transparency as key brand advantages.

Responsibilities

  • Own and define the category narrative for Affirm.
  • Develop messaging frameworks for credit and consumer protection discussions.
  • Partner with Legal, Policy, and Product teams to ensure narrative accuracy and relevance.
  • Identify consumer confusion and convert it into brand opportunities.
  • Keep the narrative current by working with cross-functional teams.
  • Monitor media and policy landscapes for narrative opportunities and risks.
  • Support high-visibility events with a clear, consumer-centered narrative.
  • Adapt narratives for global markets while maintaining consistent beliefs.

Benefits

  • 100% subsidized medical coverage for employees and dependents.
  • Generous stipends for technology, food, lifestyle needs, and family-forming expenses.
  • Competitive vacation and holiday schedule for work-life balance.
  • Employee stock purchase plan available at a discount.
Full Job Description
About the Role

Affirm operates in a category that is still being defined. As it stands, the term "BNPL" is limiting. Credit cards have become mainstream but aren't always the best consumer option.

Indeed, today's ways to pay are not tomorrow's. Affirm has a vision on how to shape what's next. But, we need to bring people along as current paradigms of credit are remade.

The Senior Manager, Category Narrative drives this work. That means building a narrative that earns Affirm a different place in how the category is understood - accurate, honest, and compelling enough to resonate with consumers, and credible enough to hold up with policymakers, merchants, partners, and investors.

This role sits at the intersection of category design and consumer truth. You'll define how Affirm talks about financial experience and consumer choice - shaping the conversations that matter, in the forums where they happen, before they get away from us. Regulatory debates, media coverage, and legal scrutiny aren't defensive lanes. They're where the category gets defined, and this role plays offense in all of them.

What You'll Do
  • Own the category narrative. Define the category Affirm is building, what it is and how the space should be understood, and ensure that through-line holds whether someone encounters it in a press story, an earnings call, or a policy conversation.
  • Develop and maintain messaging frameworks. Guide how Affirm talks about credit, financial experience, and consumer protection.
  • Partner with Legal, Policy, and Product. Ensure the category narrative reflects how the product actually works and keeps pace as it evolves, framing new capabilities in the context of the broader credit ecosystem - and push for language that's both legally sound and narratively strong.
  • Proactively build consumer clarity. Identify where confusion has eroded trust and turn those friction points into brand opportunities.
  • Keep the narrative current. Work closely with cross-functional partners to identify when the consumer financial narrative needs to evolve, and lead the process of updating it when it does.
  • Stay ahead of the conversation. Identify the conversations shaping the future of payments that we want to enter and lead, and monitor the media, policy, and competitive landscape for narrative risks and opportunities before they become obvious.
  • Support high-visibility moments. Bring the narrative infrastructure to earnings, policy milestones, and category-defining press, ensuring Affirm shows up with a clear, consumer-centered point of view.
  • Adapt the narrative for global markets. Ensure Affirm's forward-looking narrative translates across markets with different cultural contexts around credit and lending - consistent in belief, sensitive in perspective.

What We Look For
  • A category-design instinct: able to see the bigger story and make the case for why Affirm's model is genuinely different - not just differently framed
  • Deep understanding of how financial products work and how to translate that into language that resonates with a mainstream consumer audience, as well as a financial one
  • 12+ years in narrative strategy, communications, policy, financial services, or a related field, with a track record of shaping how a complex story is understood by multiple audiences.
  • Experience navigating regulated communication environments - financial services, IR, policy, legal, or similar - without losing the narrative thread
  • Strong editorial instincts: can write and pressure-test messaging that holds up under press scrutiny, regulatory review, and consumer skepticism
  • Ability to distinguish between what's legally safe and what's narratively strong, and the conviction to push for both
  • Comfort operating in policy conversations. Able to shape how Affirm shows up in debates about the future of credit and payments, not just respond to them.
  • Cross-functional influence: able to get alignment from stakeholders who care about very different things
  • Believes that clarity and transparency are brand advantages, not compliance requirements

Pay Grade - N
Equity Grade - 10

Employees new to Affirm typically come in at the start of the pay range. Affirm focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure which is based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job-related skills. Base pay is part of a total compensation package that may include equity rewards, monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents.)

USA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT) per year: $195,000 - $255,000
USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $173,000 - $233,000
#LI-Remote

Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company! The majority of our roles are remote and you can work almost anywhere within the country of employment. Affirmers in proximal roles have the flexibility to work remotely, but will occasionally be required to work out of their assigned Affirm office. A limited number of roles remain office-based due to the nature of their job responsibilities.

We're extremely proud to offer competitive benefits that are anchored to our core value of people come first. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:
  • 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

About Affirm

Affirm is a publicly traded financial technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States. Founded in 2012, the company operates as a financial lender of installment loans for consumers to use at the point of sale to finance a purchase. Affirm was founded in 2012 by Max Levchin, Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz, and Alex Rampell as part of the initial portfolio of startup studio HVF. Levchin, who co-founded PayPal, became CEO of Affirm in 2014. In October 2017, the company launched a consumer app that allowed loans for purchases at any retailer. The company announced a partnership with Walmart in February 2019. Under the partnership, Affirm is available to customers in-store and on the Walmart website. Affirm has partnered with e-commerce platforms including Shopify, BigCommerce, and Zen-Cart. On November 18, 2020, Affirm filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for an initial public offering. On December 12, 2020, it was reported that Affirm had postponed its IPO. On January 13, 2021, Affirm became listed on NASDAQ with symbol AFRM, raising about $1.2 billion in its IPO. By the next day, the price of shares had doubled, making Levchin's stake worth about $2.5 billion. In May 2021, Affirm acquired Returnly, a financial technology service company, for $300 million.
Learn more about Affirm
Size
1,300 employees
Market Cap
$2.5 billion
Industry
Net Income
-$97.6 million
Founded
2012
Revenue
$617.1 million
NASDAQ

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