Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Capacity Modeling)

Affirm

Remote Actively hiring
Remote US Posted 21 days ago $225,000–$275,000 / year
View original post Log in to save

At a glance

AI generated

TL;DR

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Capacity Modeling team at Affirm, you will lead technical strategy and execution for backend systems that ensure the company can handle forecasted traffic during peak sales events. Your responsibilities include collaborating with product management, design, and analytics to develop highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes. You will also manage your team’s operations by implementing monitoring, alerting, and testing protocols while fostering a culture of quality through code review standards and technical talks. Ideal candidates have over 8 years of experience in designing scalable backend systems with Python or Kotlin, tuning autoscaling for compute workloads, and delivering major features during large-scale sales events like Prime Day or Black Friday.

Skills

Python Kubernetes AWS MySQL Spark Docker CI/CD PostgreSQL ElasticCache DynamoDB AuroraDB Terraform Prometheus Grafana

What you'll do

  • Develop and maintain statistical capacity models for traffic forecasting.
  • Ensure infrastructure resources are scaled appropriately across regions.
  • Define technical solutions and operational processes to enhance team efficiency.
  • Implement monitoring, alerting, and testing protocols for system reliability.
  • Advocate for code review and design standards within the engineering community.

What we're looking for

  • 8+ years of experience designing and developing backend systems at scale.
  • Extensive track record in building highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark, Kubernetes.
  • Experience supporting large-scale sales events like Prime Day or Black Friday.
  • Expertise in tuning autoscaling, CPU/Memory, and multi-threading for compute workloads.
  • Strong verbal and written communication skills for global engineering collaboration.

Market check

Salary context

This $225,000–$275,000 range sits above 94% of similar postings on FindRole.

Peer median band

$143,000–$250,000

Median floor and ceiling across peers.

Typical midpoint (25–75%)

$168,500–$214,625

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.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Affirm

More like this

Similar roles

Staff Backend Software Engineer

Intuit

Mountain View, California, US 43 days ago $197,000–$266,500
Python Django RESTful APIs SQL PostgreSQL Git GitHub CI/CD Kubernetes AWS Docker Linux Nginx Redis JWT OAuth2.0

Staff Backend Software Engineer

Intuit

New York, New York, US 43 days ago $197,000–$266,500
Python Django RESTful APIs SQL PostgreSQL Git GitHub CI/CD Kubernetes AWS Docker Linux Nginx Redis

Staff Backend Software Engineer

Intuit

San Diego, California, US 43 days ago $184,500–$250,000
Python Django RESTful APIs SQL PostgreSQL Git GitHub CI/CD Kubernetes AWS Docker Linux Nginx Redis

Staff Backend Software Engineer

Intuit

Atlanta, Georgia, US 43 days ago
Python Django RESTful APIs SQL PostgreSQL Git GitHub CI/CD AWS Kubernetes Docker Linux Nginx JSON Swagger