Senior Staff Backend Software Engineer, Affirm
Online Storage
$232-310k
Salary dependent on location. Plus employee stock purchase plan
POS installment loans
Be an early applicant
POS installment loans
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$232-310k
Salary dependent on location. Plus employee stock purchase plan
1001+ employees
Company mission
To deliver honest and transparent financial products that improve users' lives.
Role
Who you are
- Experience: 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a proven track record of delivering complex software solutions that improve availability, performance and scalability of the infrastructure
- Database Expertise: 6+ years of hands-on experience with MySQL and Distributed SQL, including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning
- Distributed Systems: Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts and experience with technologies like consensus algorithms, distributed transactions, and data replication
- Problem Solving: Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to identify, and resolve complex technical challenges and establish long-lasting solutions/processes
- Programming Skills: Proficiency in at least two of Kotlin, Python, Go, Rust, with a strong emphasis on clean, maintainable code
- Leadership: Demonstrated leadership and mentorship skills, with the ability to inspire and guide others. You can also work cross-functionally addressing technical challenges and influencing roadmaps outside your direct area of ownership
- Innovate: You drive innovation in the platforms you build and operate, and have experience contributing to open-source projects. You are also passionate about engaging with the Distributed systems/ Databases community
- Infrastructure as a Code (IaaC): Strong proficiency in operating automation tools to manage database infra like Terraform and Ansible
- Communication: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to clearly articulate technical ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences
- This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field
What the job involves
- The Online Storage team provides a set of managed databases as a platform, used to persist data for all Affirm services
- Our platform enables self-service access to OLTP storage systems, including AWS Aurora (MySQL), DynamoDB, Distributed SQL, Caching
- As a team, we are responsible for various data and access patterns, including but not limited to mission-critical financial transactional data, data science models, and any new persistence use case
- These responsibilities require us to learn and gain deep expertise in various database systems
- As a member of the Online Storage infrastructure team, you will collaborate with other teams - including product, infrastructure, and site reliability engineering (SRE) to:
- Help design and build a scalable datastore platform, aligning strategies with Affirm's goals, and leveraging experience in creating multi-region, horizontally scalable, globally available, and high-performance datastore solutions
- Collaborate with other teams on their database needs and provide continuous guidance on design and architecture
- Participate in an on-call rotation and collaborate with other teams such as SRE to solve production issues
- Upgrade, cost optimize, and maintain our fleet of databases
- Lead and develop technical strategies to build and maintain self-service database platforms aligned withAffirms long-term architectural vision
- Establish the best practices in development of database solutions and management to provide critical support for operating systems at scale. These include schema/data migrations, disaster recovery, observability, sharding and performance tuning
- Ensure adoption of the best practices to improve production health
- Stay ahead of industry trends in storage technologies and solutions and identify opportunities to innovate and improve our storage offerings
- Mentor engineers providing guidance on new storage technologies, development, operations and foster a culture of innovation and technical excellence
- Architect and Implement: Design, develop, and maintain core components of OnStor's cloud-based data management platform, with a focus on scalability, performance, and reliability
- Database Expertise: Leverage your deep knowledge of MySQL and Distributed SQL to optimize database performance, ensure data integrity, and implement efficient data access patterns. Should possess deep understanding of Database fundamentals including scaling, partitioning, sharding and performance tuning in multiple functional environments. Strong background and expertise in building and operating databases in cloud environments. Expertise in database benchmarking, load testing, and capacity planning. Familiarity with connection poolers and proxies such as ProxySQL, RDS Proxy Pg Bouncer, etc
- Distributed Systems: Tackle the challenges of large-scale distributed systems, including data partitioning, replication, and consistency models
- Collaboration: Work closely with product managers to translate business requirements into technical solutions, and with fellow engineers to deliver high-quality software
- Mentorship: Guide and mentor junior engineers, sharing your expertise and fostering a culture of technical excellence
- Innovation: Stay ahead of the curve by researching and experimenting with emerging technologies and trends in the database and distributed systems space
Our take
Affirm offers point-of-sale loans to consumers, working with merchants like Shopify, KAYAK, and Walmart. Buy now, pay later transactions have grown in popularity in recent years, and this business is tapping into the market with a totally different approach to credit - by delivering the Affirm card, the first US debit card with the option to pay-over-time.
Boating over 15 million customers and 245,000+ merchants, the company offers flexible payback options, ranging from 3 to 36 months. The interest rates run between 0% and 30%, so, while they are not necessarily the cheapest option, Affirm prides itself on having no fees for late payments, no hidden charges, and total transparency about what people will pay before they take out a loan.
Affirm collects payments from the customers and pays the merchants directly, shouldering the risk itself. The company has boosted its market share, expanding its availability beyond the US to include most of Canada, and continues to launch new features and create new partnerships towards bettering its offering.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-11% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Sep 2020
$500m
SERIES G
Apr 2019
$300m
SERIES F
Total funding: $1.1bn
Company benefits
- Spending wallets
- Supportive communities
- Remote-first workforce
- Generous time off
- Health benefits
- Mental healthcare
- Birth and non-birth parents get 18 weeks’ paid leave. Plus, a 4-week return-to-work transition program, at full base pay
- We have a simple, flexible, and transparent remote-first compensation structure so you can make the best decisions for yourself and your family
- We offer 24 company-wide paid days off—which help our teams collectively pause to recharge
- Learning & development
Company values
- People Come First
- No Fine Print
- It's On Us
- Simpler is Better
- Push the Envelope
Company HQ
Chinatown, San Francisco, CA
Articles
Leadership
Max Levchin
(CEO)Has founded/co-founded numerous companies, holding various executive positions at each, including Paypal, Slide, Glow, HVF Labs, and SciFi VC. Also worked at large brands including Google, Yelp, Yahoo, and Evernote.
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