--- title: 'Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Compute Platform) at Affirm' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-affirm-united-states-bdkc933q3rps' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-01' --- # Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Compute Platform) at Affirm - **Company:** Affirm - **Location:** United States - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-10-30 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-01 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/affirm/jobs/8057948003 ## Job description At Affirm, we exist for the moments that matter—giving people a clear, predictable way to pay over time, with no hidden fees, no surprises, and no tradeoffs on what matters most. Affirm's engineering team is building a large-scale, highly-available, and global infrastructure that is shared across multiple financial products. Ensuring that our infrastructure is accessible to all engineers is critical to the success of the business. We pride ourselves on our culture across engineering of engaging in thorough technical design review, operational excellence, and capable incident response and analysis. The Compute Platform team owns the EKS foundation that Affirm's products run on, from cluster provisioning and lifecycle through the safety standards that keep thousands of workloads reliable at scale. Affirm operates 90+ EKS clusters across environments and regions, and this team is responsible for making that fleet standardized, automated, observable, and self-healing, while establishing and enforcing the workload configuration standards that protect availability. Our mission is to provide a secure, reliable, and scalable Kubernetes platform that lets infrastructure and application teams deploy and operate with confidence and minimal operational friction. ## What you’ll do As a member of the Compute Platform organization, you will collaborate with other teams - including Product, Infrastructure, Traffic, Cost & Capacity Engineering to: - Architect and evolve Affirm's EKS platform, driving strategy across cluster lifecycle, node management, and shared cluster components - Lead the technical direction for cluster provisioning, upgrades, and teardown through standardized IaC (Terraform, Spacelift) and self-service workflows - Own the reliability of core shared components across the fleet (Karpenter, CoreDNS, VPC CNI, Kube Proxy, Metrics Server, etc) and the CI/CD pipeline that ships them consistently - Define and enforce EKS workload safety standards covering resource configuration, workload isolation and blast radius, disruption tolerance (PDBs), Karpenter consolidation strategies, etc - Build the enforcement and automation path that moves each standard from research and white-glove onboarding through broad adoption to policy-enforced defaults for new workloads - Establish the observability, baseline audits, and reporting needed to identify hot spots and measure risk mitigation over time - Partner with cluster-user teams (checkout, batch, ML, analytics, DevProd, etc) to understand workload needs and shape the platform accordingly - Drive cost and capacity strategy across node scaling, bin packing, and EC2 instance selection - Mentor engineers across the Compute Platform teams and set the bar for operational excellence - Participate in the on-call rotation, triage and catalogue runtime K8s issues, and collaborate with SRE on production incidents ## What we look for - Deep EKS and Kubernetes internals expertise, including cluster upgrades, node lifecycle, scheduling, and autoscaling (Karpenter, Cluster Autoscaler) - Demonstrated experience automating Kubernetes operations at fleet scale, from cluster provisioning, upgrades, and node lifecycle to self-healing remediation and policy-driven enforcement, replacing manual toil with auditable, self-service workflows - Strong grasp of workload reliability patterns: resource tuning, probes, PDBs, topology and isolation constraints - Experience designing and enforcing platform standards through policy (admission control, OPA/Gatekeeper or equivalent) and automated frameworks - Infrastructure as Code fluency with Terraform and a GitOps or pipeline-driven delivery model (ArgoCD, kube-applier, or similar) - Observability instincts: defining SLOs, building metrics, logs, and alerting coverage, and running data-driven baseline audits - Cross-functional collaboration skills with platform, product, SRE, and capacity teams - Demonstrated mentorship and technical leadership across teams - Drive to track emerging Kubernetes community best practices and adapt them to Affirm's needs ## Qualifications - 10+ years in software or infrastructure engineering with proven delivery of complex platform solutions - 6+ years hands-on operating production Kubernetes at scale, ideally EKS on AWS - Strong cloud-native architecture experience on AWS (EC2, VPC, IAM, EKS) - Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Spacelift a plus) and GitOps-style deployment pipelines - Expert-level proficiency in Go or Python and a proven track record building production-grade Kubernetes controllers, operators, and platform tooling that other engineering teams depend on - Track record designing and enforcing standards across many teams without becoming a bottleneck - Exceptional problem-solving and systems-thinking skills - Demonstrated leadership and cross-functional influence - This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field. Base Pay Grade - R Equity Grade - 15 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: $265,000 - $325,000 USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $236,000 - $296,000 #LI-Remote Remote-first with flexibility built in Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company. Most roles can be done from almost anywhere within the country of employment. Some positions may occasionally require in-person work at an Affirm office, and a few are office-based due to the nature of the work. All new hires will be invited to attend an in-person onboarding experience. ## Benefits designed for you Our benefits reflect our commitment to care, transparency, and flexibility. Here are a few highlights: - Health coverage at no cost: We cover 100% of premiums for employees and their dependents. - Spending stipends: Monthly stipends support your tech setup, and the ability to choose health and wellness options that are right for you. - Time off to recharge: Flexible time off and generous holiday calendars help you rest when you need to. - Own a piece of what you build: Our employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) lets you buy Affirm stock at a discount. We’re committed to providing an inclusive interview process, including accommodations for candidates with disabilities. If you need support, we’re happy to help. For positions based in San Francisco or Los Angeles: Affirm considers qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, as required by law. By clicking "Submit Application," you acknowledge that you have read Affirm's [Global Candidate Privacy Notice](https://www.affirm.com/global-candidate-privacy-notice) and consent to the use of your personal information as described. ## About Affirm ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Affirm is a financial technology company that offers transparent, flexible buy now, pay later (BNPL) installment loans, a debit card, and a savings account, enabling consumers to pay over time without hidden fees. - **Entity Type**: Public (NASDAQ: AFRM) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2012 - **Founders**: Max Levchin, Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz, Alex Rampell ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Financial services – point-of-sale lending, digital payments, consumer banking. - **Target customers**: B2C (consumers seeking flexible payment options) and B2B (merchants of all sizes, from SMBs to enterprise retailers). - **Mission or purpose statement**: To deliver honest financial products that improve lives, offering transparency with no late fees or hidden charges. ## Products & Services - **Adaptive Checkout**: An AI-powered checkout flow that optimizes payment options for each consumer. - **AdaptAI**: A suite of AI tools for merchants to personalize offers and manage risk. - **BoostAI**: An AI-driven feature that dynamically adjusts installment terms to increase approval rates. - **Split Pay**: A BNPL product that lets consumers split purchases into biweekly payments. - **Affirm Card**: A Visa debit card that allows cardholders to pay over time at any merchant that accepts Visa. - **Affirm Money Account**: A high-yield savings account and debit card, held with Cross River Bank, Member FDIC. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: USD 5.17 billion (as of July 2026) - **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue – USD 3.22 billion (trailing twelve months as of Q3 FY2026). Total funding raised (including debt financing) – USD 9.57 billion. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Partners include Bed Bath & Beyond, Royal Caribbean, Stripe (UK), Google, Costco, and Backcountry. Investors include Morgan Stanley, Sixth Street, and CPP Investments. - **Growth Signals**: Nearly 27 million active consumers, 515,000 active merchants, and over $46 billion in Gross Merchandise Volume (LTM as of March 31, 2026). Revenue grew to $3.22B, and the company achieved positive net income of $52M in FY2025. Headcount increased 1.1% YoY to 2,132 employees, with active job postings up 103.8% year-over-year. ## Competitive Advantages - **Transparency-first model**: No late fees, no compounding interest – a key differentiator in the BNPL space. - **Machine learning underwriting**: Proprietary risk models that evaluate each transaction in real-time, reducing defaults while maintaining high approval rates. - **Large merchant network**: 515,000+ active merchants, including major retailers, providing broad consumer reach. - **Integrated ecosystem**: The Affirm Card and Money Account create a sticky financial platform beyond just checkout loans. ## Strategic Focus - **International expansion**: Currently operating in the U.S., Canada, and the UK, with recent partnerships (e.g., Stripe in UK, Royal Caribbean in UK/Canada) signaling further global growth. - **AI & personalization**: Continued investment in AI tools (AdaptAI, BoostAI) to improve merchant conversion and consumer experience. - **Affirm Card growth**: Driving adoption of the card as a daily payment method, with 4.4 million card active consumers. - **Capital partnerships**: Renewing and expanding capital partnerships (e.g., CPP Investments) to fund loan origination. ## Why Work Here - **Remote-first culture**: Most roles are remote within the employee’s home country, with a simple, transparent compensation structure. - **Generous benefits**: 18 weeks of paid parental leave for birth and non-birth parents, plus a 4-week return-to-work transition at full pay. 20 company-wide paid days off (“Away Days”) to collectively recharge. Flexible time off, mental healthcare programs, and “spending wallets” for tech, food, lifestyle, and family planning. - **Learning & development**: Exciting learning programs to level up growth. - **Employee community**: Active employee resource groups and supportive communities. - **Compensation**: Transparent, flexible, remote-first structure. Example: Senior Software Engineer median salary ~$207,029/year. - **Workplace ratings**: 3.8/5 on LinkedIn (638 reviews), with compensation rated 4.4/5, culture 3.6/5, and work-life balance 3.6/5. - **Engineering culture**: Heavy technical team (29% of workforce in engineering/technical roles), with strong talent from PayPal, Amazon, Google, and Stripe. ## Sources 1. [affirm.com/careers](https://www.affirm.com/careers) 2. [linkedin.com/company/affirm](https://www.linkedin.com/company/affirm) 3. 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