[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer, Back-end (Identity Engineering) @Affirm

Role Description

Identity at Affirm is mission-critical; it is the very first step of the customer journey and the foundation of global expansion. The International Expansion Unit (IEU) owns Identity for every market outside North America, placing our team at the center of Affirm’s global strategy. We are responsible for ensuring Affirm can enter and scale in new markets while operating compliantly across diverse regulatory environments.

Our scope includes building and expanding Identity Data Management, KYC Verification, and Decisioning capabilities, while driving architectural changes that impact Identity services globally. We don’t just execute; we influence the core platform’s evolution to support new risk models and market dynamics. Operating at the intersection of technical depth and regulatory complexity, we directly impact approval rates, conversion, and fraud exposure. By joining this team, you will shape the foundational processes that unlock revenue and build customer trust on a global scale.

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.

Qualifications

• 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 strong verbal and written communication skills that support effective collaboration with our global engineering team.
• 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.

Requirements

• Pay Grade - L
• Equity Grade - 7
• Employees new to Affirm typically come in at the start of the pay range.
• Affirm focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job-related skills.
• GBR base pay range per year: £140,000 - 180,000

Benefits

• Health care coverage - Affirm covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents.
• Flexible Spending Wallets - generous stipends for spending on Technology, Food, various Lifestyle needs, and family forming expenses.
• Time off - competitive vacation and holiday schedules allowing you to take time off to rest and recharge.
• ESPP - An employee stock purchase plan enabling you to buy shares of Affirm at a discount.