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Salary: USD 204,000 - 290,000 / annual
Affirm is building a new search and discovery team to power its advertising platform and marketplace. This Staff Software Engineer role owns the technical strategy and execution for backend systems that drive search, recommendations, and discovery experiences for consumers shopping through Affirm. You will set technical direction on a year-long horizon, collaborate across product, design, and analytics to ensure technical sustainability, and serve as a force-multiplier for your team through advocacy of technical solutions and operational excellence.
Key responsibilities include:
- Defining and executing technical strategy for the search backend team
- Collaborating with product, design, and analytics to manage technical risks and trade-offs
- Owning team operations, availability, monitoring, on-call rotations, and incident response
- Setting code review and design standards; fostering a culture of quality and ownership
- Developing talent through feedback, guidance, and mentorship
- Delivering major features and system components through clear technical and execution planning
This role is foundational to Affirm's vision of becoming a definitive shopping destination and supports the development of an agentic platform.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and launching backend systems at scale using Python or Kotlin
- Extensive track record developing highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes
- Experience developing consumer experiences using UI frameworks like React
- 2+ years of experience in search or related recommendation engines
- Demonstrated ability to deliver major features, system components, or deprecations through technical planning and execution
- High-quality code that is easily understood and used by others
- Comfort with ambiguity and ability to work across language idioms and large-scale system architecture
- Strong verbal and written communication skills for effective global collaboration
- Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience
