Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Identity Decisioning)

About the Position

Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Identity Decisioning)

Remote US

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 Identity team is mission-critical to the customer checkout experience. When a customer chooses Affirm, one of the first steps is an identity check, and our ability to make the right decision directly impacts conversion, revenue, fraud exposure, and regulatory compliance. Our team owns Identity for all markets outside North America, playing a key role in Affirm’s international expansion. We are responsible for KYC, user lifecycle management, and identity decisioning across multiple regulatory environments. This work is about shaping how Affirm adapts its core Identity platform to new market dynamics, customer expectations, and compliance requirements.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
• Extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
• 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.
• 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.
• Growth and impact trajectory demonstrates that you have mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from your engineering and cross-functional peers.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.
• Either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

We Offer

• Base Pay Grade: P
• Equity Grade: 13
• Base Pay Range:
  • USA Pacific: $230,000 - $290,000
  • USA Sapphire: $204,000 - $264,000
• Benefits:
  • Health coverage at no cost: 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents.
  • Spending stipends: Monthly stipends for health, wellness, and tech spending.
  • Time off to recharge: Flexible time off and generous holiday calendars.
  • Own a piece of what you build: Employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) to buy Affirm stock at a discount.

About the Company

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.

Our benefits reflect our commitment to care, transparency, and flexibility. 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.

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