Staff Software Engineer

Affirm Affirm · Fintech · Spain · Remote · Consumer Engineering

Staff Software Engineer role at Affirm, focusing on Acquisition & Onboarding within the Consumer org. This role involves setting technical direction, driving architectural decisions, and improving full stack development across mobile, web, and backend systems. Responsibilities include defining long-term technical strategy, mentoring senior engineers, and collaborating with product, design, and analytics to build user experiences that impact business growth. Requires 8+ years of experience, proficiency in backend (Python, Kotlin, AWS, Kubernetes) and frontend (React, React Native, Vue) technologies, and experience delivering major features at scale.

What you'd actually do

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. You will act as a force-multiplier for your team through your definition and advocacy of technical solutions and operational processes.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

Skills

Required

  • 8+ years of experience as a software engineer
  • Designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale
  • Python
  • Kotlin
  • AWS
  • MySQL
  • Kubernetes
  • Developing web apps using declarative UI frameworks
  • React
  • React Native
  • Vue
  • Delivering major features, system components or deprecating existing functionality
  • Definition of a technical and execution plan
  • High quality code that is easily understood and used by others
  • Thrive in ambiguity
  • Comfortable moving from low level language idioms all the way to the architecture of large systems
  • Mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from engineering and cross-functional peers
  • Strong verbal and written communication skills
  • Effective collaboration with global engineering team
  • On-Call Rotation

Nice to have

  • Set technical direction
  • Drive architectural decisions
  • Elevate the quality and velocity of full stack development
  • Define long-term technical strategy
  • Mentor senior engineers
  • Act as a force multiplier
  • Collaborate with product, design, and analytics
  • Ensure technical sustainability, risks and trade-offs are well understood and managed
  • Advocate for technical solutions and operational processes
  • Own team's operations and availability
  • Ensure right monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, policies, testing and alerting
  • Foster a culture of quality and ownership
  • Set code review and design standards
  • Provide feedback and guidance
  • Lead by example

What the JD emphasized

  • set technical direction
  • drive architectural decisions
  • elevate the quality and velocity of full stack development
  • defining long-term technical strategy
  • navigating ambiguity
  • building trust, clarity, and value from the very first interaction
  • directly impact conversion, retention, and business growth
  • setting technical strategy for your team on a year-long time scale
  • critical, business-impacting projects
  • technical sustainability, risks and trade-offs are well understood and managed
  • definition and advocacy of technical solutions and operational processes
  • ownership of your team’s operations and availability
  • foster a culture of quality and ownership
  • setting code review and design standards
  • advocating for them beyond your team through your writing and tech talks
  • total of 8+ years of experience
  • designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale
  • developing web apps using declarative UI frameworks
  • delivering major features, system components or deprecating existing functionality
  • definition of a technical and execution plan
  • high quality code that is easily understood and used by others
  • thrive in ambiguity
  • comfortable moving from low level language idioms all the way to the architecture of large systems
  • mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from your engineering and cross-functional peers
  • strong verbal and written communication skills
  • effective collaboration with our global engineering team