Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Ledger Engineering)

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.

The Ledger Engineering team enables rapid financial product innovation by providing an audit-grade ledger platform that ties ambitious company growth to a highly regulated industry's real-world accounting controls. We are passionate about building robust, fault-tolerant, highly scalable systems that enable us to be on-time and precisely accurate in every financial interaction we have both with our consumers and institutional finance partners.

Ledger Engineering works with our finance partners to support everything from closing our monthly books to annual audits. We bridge the technical gap between data, strategy, and the thorough level of accounting detail required to operate a publicly-traded company. Outside of accounting, we partner with the Capital Markets team to help open our business to investors who require a similar forensic level of reporting.

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 in financial systems, ledgering, treasury or adjacent domains where data accuracy and system reliability are critical.

· 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.

Base Pay Grade - P

Equity Grade - USA 13

Employees 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.

Base 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.)

USA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT) per year: $230,000 - $290,000
USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $204,000 - $264,000

#LI-Remote

Remote-first with flexibility built in
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.

Benefits designed for you
Our benefits reflect our commitment to care, transparency, and flexibility. Here are a few highlights:

• 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 Affirm 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.

For positions based in San Francisco or Los Angeles: Affirm considers qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, as required by law.

By 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.