As a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Affirm, you will join an innovative ML team dedicated to revolutionizing financial services. Your role involves partnering with various leaders to design and implement advanced machine learning systems that drive critical decisions across the company. You will mentor senior engineers, define long-term technical strategies, and ensure robust testing and monitoring practices are in place. The ideal candidate has over 10 years of experience leading large-scale ML projects, proficiency in Python and frameworks like PyTorch and XGBoost, and hands-on expertise with distributed systems such as Spark or Ray. You will work on complex, cross-functional initiatives that require deep understanding of neural networks, sequence modeling, and feature engineering at scale.
Define and drive multi-year technical strategy for machine learning across Affirm.
Lead design, implementation, and scaling of advanced ML systems to support complex initiatives.
Partner with leadership teams to shape long-term modeling capabilities and guide infrastructure evolution.
Provide broad technical leadership by mentoring senior engineers and spreading ML expertise.
Champion operational excellence, ensuring robust testing, monitoring, and reliability practices across critical ML systems.
What we're looking for
10+ years of experience in large-scale, real-time machine learning systems.
Proven track record of driving technical innovation and delivering measurable business impact.
Deep expertise in designing end-to-end ML systems using distributed frameworks like Spark or Ray.
Proficiency in Python, PyTorch, XGBoost, and ML tooling such as Kubeflow or MLflow.
Strong understanding of representation learning, embedding-based modeling, and neural network architectures.
Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership and mentor senior engineers.
Market check
Salary context
This
$260,000–$310,000
range sits above
92%
of similar postings on FindRole.
Peer median band
$158,400–$240,700
Median floor and ceiling across peers.
Typical midpoint (25–75%)
$165,852–$244,000
Middle half of comparable postings.
Based on 240 comparable postings.*
* 240 is the maximum number of comparable postings sampled.
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
57 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$190,000–$240,000
across 56 roles with salary data.