{"id":3536657,"url":"https://alion.io/job/affirm-senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-2","title":"Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Compute Platform)","company":{"id":572,"name":"Affirm","domain":"affirm.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/affirm","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":81,"open_postings":7,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.571,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":67,"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":265000,"max":325000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":325000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Amazon EC2","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon EKS","optional":false},{"name":"ArgoCD","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"GitOps","optional":false},{"name":"IAM","optional":false},{"name":"Karpenter","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Self-Healing","optional":false},{"name":"SLI/SLO/SLA","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-30T16:25:14Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-30","last_verified_at":"2026-11-01T21:42:14Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"At Affirm, we exist for the moments that matter-giving people a clear, predictable way to pay over time, with no hidden fees, no surprises, and no tradeoffs on what matters most.\nAffirm's engineering team is building a large-scale, highly-available, and global infrastructure that is shared across multiple financial products. Ensuring that our infrastructure is accessible to all engineers is critical to the success of the business. We pride ourselves on our culture across engineering of engaging in thorough technical design review, operational excellence, and capable incident response and analysis.\nThe Compute Platform team owns the EKS foundation that Affirm's products run on, from cluster provisioning and lifecycle through the safety standards that keep thousands of workloads reliable at scale. Affirm operates 90+ EKS clusters across environments and regions, and this team is responsible for making that fleet standardized, automated, observable, and self-healing, while establishing and enforcing the workload configuration standards that protect availability. Our mission is to provide a secure, reliable, and scalable Kubernetes platform that lets infrastructure and application teams deploy and operate with confidence and minimal operational friction.\nWhat you’ll do\nAs a member of the Compute Platform organization, you will collaborate with other teams - including Product, Infrastructure, Traffic, Cost & Capacity Engineering to:\nArchitect and evolve Affirm's EKS platform, driving strategy across cluster lifecycle, node management, and shared cluster components\n\nLead the technical direction for cluster provisioning, upgrades, and teardown through standardized IaC (Terraform, Spacelift) and self-service workflows\n\nOwn the reliability of core shared components across the fleet (Karpenter, CoreDNS, VPC CNI, Kube Proxy, Metrics Server, etc) and the CI/CD pipeline that ships them consistently\n\nDefine and enforce EKS workload safety standards covering resource configuration, workload isolation and blast radius, disruption tolerance (PDBs), Karpenter consolidation strategies, etc\n\nBuild the enforcement and automation path that moves each standard from research and white-glove onboarding through broad adoption to policy-enforced defaults for new workloads\n\nEstablish the observability, baseline audits, and reporting needed to identify hot spots and measure risk mitigation over time\n\nPartner with cluster-user teams (checkout, batch, ML, analytics, DevProd, etc) to understand workload needs and shape the platform accordingly\n\nDrive cost and capacity strategy across node scaling, bin packing, and EC2 instance selection\n\nMentor engineers across the Compute Platform teams and set the bar for operational excellence\n\nParticipate in the on-call rotation, triage and catalogue runtime K8s issues, and collaborate with SRE on production incidents\n\nWhat we look for\nDeep EKS and Kubernetes internals expertise, including cluster upgrades, node lifecycle, scheduling, and autoscaling (Karpenter, Cluster Autoscaler)\n\nDemonstrated experience automating Kubernetes operations at fleet scale, from cluster provisioning, upgrades, and node lifecycle to self-healing remediation and policy-driven enforcement, replacing manual toil with auditable, self-service workflows\n\nStrong grasp of workload reliability patterns: resource tuning, probes, PDBs, topology and isolation constraints\n\nExperience designing and enforcing platform standards through policy (admission control, OPA/Gatekeeper or equivalent) and automated frameworks\n\nInfrastructure as Code fluency with Terraform and a GitOps or pipeline-driven delivery model (ArgoCD, kube-applier, or similar)\n\nObservability instincts: defining SLOs, building metrics, logs, and alerting coverage, and running data-driven baseline audits\n\nCross-functional collaboration skills with platform, product, SRE, and capacity teams\n\nDemonstrated mentorship and technical leadership across teams\n\nDrive to track emerging Kubernetes community best practices and adapt them to Affirm's needs\n\n Qualifications\n10+ years in software or infrastructure engineering with proven delivery of complex platform solutions\n\n6+ years hands-on operating production Kubernetes at scale, ideally EKS on AWS\n\nStrong cloud-native architecture experience on AWS (EC2, VPC, IAM, EKS)\n\nExperience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Spacelift a plus) and GitOps-style deployment pipelines\n\nExpert-level proficiency in Go or Python and a proven track record building production-grade Kubernetes controllers, operators, and platform tooling that other engineering teams depend on\n\nTrack record designing and enforcing standards across many teams without becoming a bottleneck\n\nExceptional problem-solving and systems-thinking skills\n\nDemonstrated leadership and cross-functional influence\n\nThis position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.\nBase Pay Grade - R\nEquity Grade - 15\nEmployees new to Affirm typically come in at the start of the pay range. Affirm focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure which is based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job-related skills.\nBase pay is part of a total compensation package that may include equity rewards, monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents.)\nUSA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT) per year: $265,000 - $325,000\nUSA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $236,000 - $296,000\nRemote-first with flexibility built in\n Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company. Most roles can be done from almost anywhere within the country of employment. Some positions may occasionally require in-person work at an Affirm office, and a few are office-based due to the nature of the work. All new hires will be invited to attend an in-person onboarding experience.\nBenefits designed for you \n Our benefits reflect our commitment to care, transparency, and flexibility. Here are a few highlights:\nHealth coverage at no cost: We cover 100% of premiums for employees and their dependents.\nSpending stipends: Monthly stipends support your tech setup, and the ability to choose health and wellness options that are right for you.\nTime off to recharge: Flexible time off and generous holiday calendars help you rest when you need to.\nOwn a piece of what you build: Our employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) lets you buy Affirm stock at a discount.\nWe’re committed to providing an inclusive interview process, including accommodations for candidates with disabilities. If you need support, we’re happy to help.\nFor positions based in San Francisco or Los Angeles: Affirm considers qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, as required by law.\nBy clicking \"Submit Application,\" you acknowledge that you have read Affirm's Global Candidate Privacy Notice and consent to the use of your personal information as described.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7031,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible time off"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Buy Now, Pay Later"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-30T17:51:10Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 74 · green card filings: 22","filings_12m":74,"filings_prev_12m":106,"green_card_filings_12m":22,"median_offered_wage_usd":175104,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":41}],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":67,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":325000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/affirm-senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/affirm-senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-02T00:05:05Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":135,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-03T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":572},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=572"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Faffirm-senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Faffirm-senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Faffirm-senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/affirm-senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Faffirm-senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-compute-platform-2"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3536657}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"affirm.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3536657},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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