Affirm

Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Capacity Modeling)

Affirm$178K — $228K *
US-AnywhereRemote in Canada
Information Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of experience in backend system design and development using Python or Kotlin.
  • Proven track record in building highly available distributed systems with AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes.
  • Experience managing traffic for high-stakes sales events, such as Prime Day or Black Friday.
  • Skilled in optimizing autoscaling and resources such as CPU/Memory and multi-threading for compute workloads.
  • Proficient in defining technical execution plans for major features and system components with clean, maintainable code.
  • Comfortable navigating ambiguity while understanding system architecture and operations.
  • Demonstrated ability to gather and integrate feedback from peers for growth and impact.
  • Strong verbal and written communication skills for effective collaboration.

Responsibilities

  • Set technical strategy for your team aligned with business-impacting projects.
  • Collaborate across teams to understand and manage technical risks and sustainability during product development.
  • Advocate for technical solutions and operational processes to enhance team productivity.
  • Ensure team operations and availability with appropriate monitoring and response strategies.
  • Cultivate a culture of quality by setting code review and design standards for the team.
  • Develop team talent through feedback, guidance, and leading by example.
  • Lead initiatives to enhance team ownership and accountability in coding practices.

Benefits

  • 100% subsidized medical coverage for you and your dependents.
  • Generous stipends for various spending needs, including technology and family-forming expenses.
  • Competitive vacation and holiday schedules for adequate rest and recharge opportunities.
  • Employee stock purchase plan to buy Affirm shares at a discount.
Full Job Description
The Capacity Modeling team ensures Affirm can safely handle forecasted traffic-especially during peak sales events-by translating demand forecasts into concrete, testable capacity plans. They build and maintain statistical capacity models that map traffic inputs (e.g., checkout volume, app opens, batch/job activity) to resource outputs (CPU, memory, connections) and then convert those forecasts into recommended capacity settings such as pod counts, HPA ranges, and/or infrastructure sizing changes across regions and environments.

The coverage of infrastructure resources includes not only Compute but also infrastructure such as ElasticCache, DynamoDB, AuroraDB, and more.

What You'll Do
  • You will be 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.
  • You will 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.
  • You will act as a force-multiplier for your team through your definition and advocacy of technical solutions and operational processes.
  • You 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.
  • You will 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.
  • You will help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, and leading by example.

What We Look For
  • You have 8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
  • You have an extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
  • You have experience supporting scale up and down of large scale sales event such as Prime Day, Black Friday Cyber Monday, or other sales holidays
  • You have tuned autoscaling, CPU/Memory, and multi-threading for compute type workloads.
  • You have experience delivering major features, system components or deprecating existing functionality in a system through the definition of a technical and execution plan. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
  • You 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.
  • Your growth and impact trajectory demonstrates that you have mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from your engineering and cross-functional peers.
  • You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.


Pay Grade - P
Equity Grade - 7

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 monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents). In addition, the employees may be eligible for equity rewards offered by Affirm Holdings, Inc. (parent company).

CAN base pay range per year: $178,000 - $228,000

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

#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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