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.
The Engineering team builds systems that power Affirm’s mission. We take pride in our craft, building reliable, performant, and scalable solutions that touch every part of the business. Whether we’re enabling new ways to pay, ensuring our platforms can scale to the most demanding levels in the industry, or developing seamless servicing experiences, our focus is on solving complex problems through exceptional engineering.
The Mesh Traffic team enables secure, reliable, and observable communication across Affirm’s microservices platform. Our engineers work on the core networking and compute infrastructure to ensure reliable delivery for requests through artifacts like service meshes, proxies, and gateways through cloud native technologies like Kubernetes, Istio, and Envoy. We're always looking for new ways to evolve our platform and improve the architecture through new technologies.
What You'll Do- You will be responsible for owning and delivering quarterly goals for your team, leading engineers on your team through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, and ensuring that everyone is supported throughout delivery.
- You will support your peers and stakeholders in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics by participating in ideation, articulating technical constraints, and partnering on decisions that properly consider risks and trade-offs.
- You will proactively identify project, process, technology or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them.
- You will support the operations and availability of your team’s artifacts by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating when needed, and supporting “keep the lights on” & on-call efforts.
- You will foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting or improving 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 4+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
- You have a track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes.
- You have owned and operated cloud-native distributed infrastructure in networking or compute.
- You have deep expertise of Kubernetes resource management, Helm charts, and operator patterns, centered around networking workloads.
- You have experience defining a technical plan for the delivery of a significant feature or system component with an elegant, simple and extensible design. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
- You are proficient at making significant changes in a large code base, and have developed a suite of tools and practices that enable you and your team to do so safely.
- Your experience demonstrates that you take ownership of your growth, proactively seeking feedback from your team, your manager, and your stakeholders.
- You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.
- This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Pay Grade - N
Equity Grade - 8
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: $190,000 - 240,000
USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $169,000-219,000
#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
We believe It’s On Us to provide an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of individualized support during the hiring process.
[For U.S. positions that could be performed in Los Angeles or San Francisco] Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, Affirm will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
By clicking "Submit Application," you acknowledge that you have read Affirm's Global Candidate Privacy Notice and hereby freely and unambiguously give informed consent to the collection, processing, use, and storage of your personal information as described therein.
Skills Required
- 4+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems
- Experience with AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes
- Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience
What the Team is Saying
Affirm Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage includes $0 employee premiums for medical, dental, and vision across all tiers, alongside company‑paid life, AD&D, and disability coverage. Mental‑health access via Spring Health provides no‑cost sessions and guided care navigation for employees and eligible family members.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time away spans Flexible Time Off for exempt staff, ~20 accrued vacation days for non‑exempt, 10 Health Days, up to 15 Life Happens days, bereavement up to 10 days, and scheduled company‑wide Away Days. These layers create frequent, structured opportunities to disconnect beyond standard PTO.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave provides 18 weeks for birth and non‑birth parents with return‑to‑work transition support. Family‑building benefits include Maven support and a one‑time $20,000 S.A.F.E. wallet for surrogacy, adoption, fertility, and egg freezing.
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.
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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.
