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 Ledger Engineering team enables rapid financial product innovation by providing an audit-grade ledger platform that ties ambitious company growth to a highly regulated industry's real-world accounting controls. We are passionate about building robust, fault-tolerant, highly scalable systems that enable us to be on-time and precisely accurate in every financial interaction we have both with our consumers and institutional finance partners.
Ledger Engineering works with our finance partners to support everything from closing our monthly books to annual audits. We bridge the technical gap between data, strategy, and the thorough level of accounting detail required to operate a publicly-traded company. Outside of accounting, we partner with the Capital Markets team to help open our business to investors who require a similar forensic level of reporting.
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 in financial systems, ledgering, treasury or adjacent domains where data accuracy and system reliability are critical.
· 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.
· This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Base Pay Grade - P
Equity Grade - USA 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
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
- 8+ years designing, developing and launching backend systems
- Proficiency with Python or Kotlin
- Experience building highly available distributed systems
- Experience with AWS
- Experience with MySQL
- Experience with Spark
- Experience with Kubernetes
- Experience in financial systems, ledgering, treasury, or adjacent domains
- Proven track record delivering major features or deprecating functionality with technical and execution plans
- Strong verbal and written communication and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience
What the Team is Saying
Affirm Compensation & Benefits Highlights
-
Healthcare Strength — Benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and robust mental‑health programs, with $0 employee medical premiums for certain plans. Feedback suggests this combination makes coverage both strong and cost‑effective.
-
Parental & Family Support — Birth and non‑birth parents receive 18 weeks of fully paid leave plus a four‑week, full‑pay return‑to‑work transition, alongside family‑planning support. Feedback suggests these policies are a standout strength for those planning or growing families.
-
Leave & Time Off Breadth — Generous/flexible PTO is augmented by 20 company‑wide Away Days and additional options like “Life Happens Leave.” Feedback suggests the mix enables both collective recharge and personal time away.
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.
