Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Capacity Modeling)

About the role

The Capacity Modeling team at Affirm is responsible for ensuring the platform can handle forecasted traffic, especially during peak sales events, by building and maintaining statistical capacity models.

Responsibilities

• Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long time scale
• Collaborate across teams in the product development lifecycle
• Act as a force-multiplier for the team through technical solutions and operational processes
• Take ownership of team operations and availability
• Foster a culture of quality and ownership on the team
• Develop talent on the team by providing feedback and guidance

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and launching backend systems at scale using Python or Kotlin
• Extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes
• Experience supporting scale up and down of large-scale sales events such as Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.
• Tuned autoscaling, CPU/Memory, and multi-threading for compute-type workloads
• Delivered major features, system components, or deprecated existing functionality through a defined technical and execution plan
• Write high-quality code that is easily understandable and usable by others
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and understanding both low-level language idioms and large system architectures
• Growth and impact trajectory demonstrating mastery of gathering and iterating on feedback from engineering and cross-functional peers
• Strong verbal and written communication skills for effective collaboration with the global engineering team

Qualifications

• Equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field

Skills

• Technical leadership and strategic planning
• Highly available distributed systems
• Autoscaling and performance tuning
• Feature delivery and system component management
• Effective communication and collaboration

Benefits

• Competitive base pay and equity grade
• Monthly stipends for health, wellness, and tech spending
• Subsidized medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible vacation and holiday schedules
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)
• Remote-first work environment