Senior Software Engineer, Backend, Workload Safety

Affirm

Confirmed live today High trust

Remote

Quick summary

Work type: Remote
Location: Canada
Salary: $195,000–$255,000 / yr
Posted: 6 days ago
Freshness: Confirmed live today

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $182k

This role $225k

$115k $270k

below market most similar roles pay here above market

This role pays more than 84% of similar roles. Most pay $149,875–$214,500 — the blue band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $225k versus about $182k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About Affirm

Affirm is a buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) financial technology company that offers point-of-sale installment loans to consumers, allowing them to split purchases into fixed monthly payments with transparent terms. Industry: Financial Technology & Consumer Lending

Affirm currently has 64 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $195,000–$255,000 across 60 roles with salary data.

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At a glance

TL;DR · Senior Software Engineer, Backend, Workload Safety

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The Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Workload Safety) joins the Workload Safety team to manage standards for a large-scale, global infrastructure running on over 85 Amazon EKS clusters. You will define and evolve workload safety standards, such as CPU and memory settings, workload isolation, and graceful termination. Responsibilities include researching and prototyping standards, building automation and policy guardrails, and leading cross-team initiatives to ensure compliance across the fleet. You will solve technical problems regarding pod lifecycle, node cycling, and cluster operating limits while analyzing resource profiles to guide instance strategies. The role requires proficiency in Go or Python, experience with Kubernetes controllers, operators, and admission webhooks like OPA Gatekeeper or Kyverno, and deep knowledge of Kubernetes resource management, scheduling, and production debugging.

Skills

Kubernetes Amazon EKS Go Python Karpenter OPA Gatekeeper Kyverno Policy-as-Code EC2 Kubernetes Controllers Admission Webhooks SRE

What you'll do

Define and evolve workload safety standards for the EKS fleet, including resource settings and isolation.
Own standards end-to-end by researching, prototyping, and enforcing them through automation and policy guardrails.
Isolate workloads by criticality to prevent misbehaving workloads from degrading critical paths like checkout.
Resolve stuck workloads and node lifecycle problems, such as pods ignoring termination signals or Karpenter timeouts.
Determine and maintain safe operating limits for clusters and develop scaling patterns for bursty workloads.
Analyze workload resource profiles to guide EC2 instance type strategy and automate analysis as workloads change.
Measure the impact of standards on availability, latency, risk, and cost to prioritize the roadmap.
Participate in on-call for Kubernetes runtime issues and convert recurring failure patterns into roadmap items.

What we're looking for

5+ years of experience running Kubernetes in production at scale, ideally Amazon EKS across many clusters.
Deep understanding of Kubernetes resource management, scheduling, pod lifecycle, and disruption management.
Experience enforcing configuration standards through admission control and policy-as-code, such as OPA Gatekeeper or Kyverno.
Proficiency in Go or Python, including building production infrastructure software like Kubernetes controllers, operators, or admission webhooks.
Strong production debugging skills and a demonstrated ability to turn recurring incidents into systemic fixes.
Track record of leading technical initiatives across multiple teams and mentoring other engineers.
Experience quantifying the impact of infrastructure changes on availability, latency, and cost.
Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.