At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead complex backend projects and shape technical strategies for Trust and Safety systems.
- Company: Join Affir, a remote-first innovative company focused on transparent payment solutions.
- Benefits: Enjoy 100% health coverage, flexible time off, and employee stock purchase options.
- Other info: Remote work available across multiple Canadian provinces with excellent career growth opportunities.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in a high-stakes environment while growing your engineering skills.
- Qualifications: 8+ years in backend development with expertise in Python or Kotlin and distributed systems.
At Affir, 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.
About The Engineering Team
The Engineering team builds systems that power Affir’s mission. We take pride in our craft, building reliable, performant, and scalable solutions that touch every part of the business. Whether we’re enabling new ways to pay, ensuring our platforms can scale to the most demanding levels in the industry, or developing seamless servicing experiences, our focus is on solving complex problems through exceptional engineering.
About The Role
The Trust and Safety Foundations team within Checkout Engineering builds and operates foundational systems and data capabilities that support how Affir understands consumer risk and meets its credit reporting obligations. Our work sits at the intersection of data quality, system reliability, regulatory requirements, and risk, creating critical infrastructure that Affir and its partners depend on to operate accurately and at scale.
As a Staff Software Engineer on Trust and Safety Foundations, you will help shape the team’s technical strategy and lead complex, business-critical initiatives across systems and stakeholders. You’ll turn ambiguous problems into clear technical approaches, guide projects from strategy through execution, and strengthen the reliability and sustainability of the systems we own. You’ll also act as a force multiplier by raising the bar for system design and engineering quality, sharing your expertise, and helping other engineers grow. This role requires strong technical judgment, deep ownership, and the ability to navigate complexity in a high-impact domain.
What You’ll Do
- You will be responsible for setting technical strategy for your team on a year-long time scale, and help your team tie it together with critical, business-impacting projects.
- You will collaborate across teams in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics to ensure technical sustainability, risks and trade-offs are well understood and managed.
- You will act as a force-multiplier for your team through your definition and advocacy of technical solutions and operational processes.
- You take ownership of your team’s operations and availability by ensuring you have the right monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, policies, testing and alerting in place to support “keep the lights on” & on‑call efforts.
- You will foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting code review and design standards for your team, and advocating for them beyond your team through your writing and tech talks.
- You will help develop talent on your team by providing feedback and guidance, and leading by example.
What We Look For
- You have 8+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
- You have an extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL, Spark and Kubernetes.
- You have experience delivering major features, system components or deprecating existing functionality in a system through the definition of a technical and execution plan. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
- You thrive in ambiguity, and are comfortable moving from low level language idioms all the way to the architecture of large systems to understand how they work.
- Your growth and impact trajectory demonstrates that you have mastered gathering and iterating on feedback from your engineering and cross‑functional peers.
- You have strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.
- This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Location - Remote Canada
This remote role is open only to candidates residing in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, or Saskatchewan.
Benefits Designed For You
- Health coverage at no cost: We cover 100% of premiums for employees and their dependents.
- Spending stipends: Monthly stipends support your tech setup, and the ability to choose health and wellness options that are right for you.
- Time off to recharge: Flexible time off and generous holiday calendars help you rest when you need to.
- Own a piece of what you build: Our employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) lets you buy Affir stock at a discount.
We’re committed to providing an inclusive interview process, including accommodations for candidates with disabilities. If you need support, we’re happy to help.
Staff Software Engineer, Backend employer: Affirm
At Affirm, we pride ourselves on being a remote-first employer that values flexibility and inclusivity, allowing our Machine Learning Engineers to thrive in a supportive environment. With comprehensive health coverage, generous time-off policies, and opportunities for professional growth, we empower our employees to take ownership of their careers while contributing to meaningful projects that redefine credit. Join us in a culture that prioritizes transparency and collaboration, where your contributions directly impact the future of financial technology.
