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.
We are seeking a seasoned Engineering Manager to lead our Resilience Engineering team. This role is critical in ensuring the safety and reliability of our production systems through proactive validation techniques, including production load testing and chaos engineering.
You will lead the development of systems and practices that allow engineers to safely test system behavior under stress and failure conditions in production, ensuring issues are discovered and mitigated before they impact real users.
What you’ll doLeadership & Strategy
- Define and drive the vision for resilience engineering at Affirm, with a focus on production load testing and chaos engineering as first-class engineering practices.
- Lead and mentor a team of engineers building platforms and tooling for safe production experimentation.
- Partner with infrastructure, product, and security leadership to embed resilience validation into the software development lifecycle.
- Establish best practices for safely testing system limits and failure scenarios in production.
Systems & Operations
- Own the design and evolution of platforms that enable safe, controlled production load testing and fault injection.
- Ensure strong safeguards are in place, including isolation boundaries, approval workflows, and automated rollback mechanisms to protect real users.
- Build systems that provide end-to-end observability, traceability, and auditability for all resilience experiments.
- Drive reliability improvements by systematically identifying weaknesses through load testing and chaos experiments.
- Establish monitoring, alerting, and incident response practices tailored to proactive resilience validation.
Collaboration & Enablement
- Work closely with engineering teams to design and execute production load tests and chaos experiments safely.
- Partner with infrastructure teams to build guardrails around tests and experimentations.
- Enable teams to adopt resilience practices by providing reusable tooling, frameworks, and standardized workflows.
- Identify systemic weaknesses and lead cross-functional efforts to improve reliability and fault tolerance.
- Evangelize a culture of “test failure before failure tests you” across the organization.
What we look for
Proven experience leading engineering teams in reliability, infrastructure, or distributed systems.
Hands-on experience with production load testing, chaos engineering, or large-scale system validation.
Experience with leveraging a chaos engineering vendor such as Gremlin, Harness, or something similar.
Strong understanding of failure modes in distributed systems, including latency, partial failure, and cascading outages.
Experience building or operating systems with strong safety guarantees (isolation, rate limiting, guardrails, auditability).
Familiarity with cloud-native environments (AWS, Kubernetes) and observability tooling.
Strong programming background (e.g., Python, Kotlin, Java, or similar).
Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to balance long-term resilience investments with immediate business needs.
Strong communication and leadership skills, with a track record of influencing engineering practices across teams.
- This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Base Pay Grade - P
Equity Grade - 13
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: 230,000 - 290,000
USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: 204,000 - 264,000
#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 and consent to the use of your personal information as described.
Skills Required
- Proven experience leading engineering teams in reliability, infrastructure, or distributed systems
- Hands-on experience with production load testing, chaos engineering, or large-scale system validation
- Experience leveraging a chaos engineering vendor such as Gremlin, Harness, or similar
- Strong understanding of distributed-system failure modes, including latency, partial failure, and cascading outages
- Experience building or operating systems with strong safety guarantees, including isolation, rate limiting, guardrails, and auditability
- Familiarity with cloud-native environments such as AWS and Kubernetes, and observability tooling
- Strong programming background in Python, Kotlin, Java, or similar
- Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to balance long-term resilience investments with immediate business needs
- Strong communication and leadership skills, with a track record of influencing engineering practices across teams
- Equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor's degree in a related field
What the Team is Saying
Affirm Compensation & Benefits Highlights
-
Affordable Benefits — Zero-premium healthcare for employees and dependents is highlighted, with the benefits portal showing $0 payroll contributions and company-paid premiums for medical, dental, and vision in 2026. Transparent plan-cost displays further underscore the low out-of-pocket burden.
-
Leave & Time Off Breadth — A wide mix is outlined, including Flexible Time Off for exempt employees, 20 accrued vacation days for non-exempt employees, Health Days, Bereavement, Life Happens leave, jury duty, and company-wide Away Days to reduce distractions. These programs collectively point to generous paid time provisions beyond standard PTO.
-
Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — No‑cost mental health support is offered via Lyra, and Forma-administered wallets provide substantial monthly stipends (e.g., Lifestyle and Tech) along with a S.A.F.E. family‑building wallet with a $20,000 lifetime maximum. This combination indicates strong support for everyday wellness and major life events.
Affirm Insights
What We Do
At Affirm, we help people say yes to the things that matter with flexible, transparent ways to pay over time. No hidden fees, no compound interest, and no fine print—just a smarter way to spend.
Why Work With Us
Who is an Affirmer? /noun/ Someone who believes finance shouldn’t be complicated. We come from a diverse set of backgrounds and we’re driven by the desire to improve lives through honest financial products. We define success by challenging one another to bring our best ideas to every single project—and we have fun while doing it.
Gallery
Affirm Offices
Remote Workspace
Employees work remotely.
Affirm is a remote-first company! Our employees can work anywhere in the U.S. but if an office is more your style, we have office locations in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Pittsburgh.
