Senior Software Engineer, Backend (AI Platform)

What You'll Do

• Plan, execute, and own technical decisions and projects within the AI Platform team, from design through launch and on-call.
• Design and build the gateway, runtime, and evaluation services that take AI workloads at Affirm from pilot to production, securely scaling across millions of users and their transactions.
• Make AI spend attributable and governable: build the identity, quota, routing, caching, and failover controls that let teams adopt new models and tools without re-solving the same platform problems.
• Partner with security, infrastructure, and product engineering teams to set the guardrails for agentic workloads and the on-behalf-of identity model for tool access.
• Create and monitor metrics for your team's systems, and own the operational health of what you ship: monitoring, alerting, runbooks, and on-call.
• Set and improve code review and design standards, and advocate for them beyond your team through writing and tech talks.
• Use AI tools and agentic workflows every day as a multiplier for your own code, design review, and operations, and push the team on what a small AI-native team can deliver.
• Educate, mentor, and grow engineers in the team, and drive best practices around design, coding, and testing.

What We Look For

• You have 4+ years of experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using languages like Python or Kotlin.
• You have a track record of developing highly available distributed systems using technologies like AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes.
• You have practical experience building with LLMs, agents, or AI frameworks in production: inference APIs, LLM gateways (LiteLLM or similar), MCP, tool calling, evals, or agent runtimes.
• You understand AI usage and the infrastructure needed to support and leverage AI workloads across different disciplines.
• You have experience defining a technical plan for the delivery of a significant feature or system component with an elegant, simple and extensible design. You write high quality code that is easily understood and used by others.
• You are proficient at making significant changes in a large code base, and have developed a suite of tools and practices that enable you and your team to do so safely.
• Your experience demonstrates that you take ownership of your growth, proactively seeking feedback from your team, your manager, and your stakeholders.
• 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.

Pay Grade - N

Pay and benefits

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: $ 195,000 - 255,000
• USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $173,000-233,000
• #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.
• 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.