Software Engineer II, Backend (Reliability Platform)

We’re looking for a software engineer to design and build a next-generation reliability platform for Affirm’s production systems. You’ll blend traditional distributed systems engineering with AI-assisted development to give teams a single place to understand, debug, and improve the health of their services.

This is a highly creative, hands-on role for someone who loves “vibe coding” — rapidly iterating, shipping, and refining with strong intuition— while still holding a very high bar for reliability, quality, and maintainability.

What you will do

• Build a centralized reliability command center that gives teams a unified view of system health, risk, and reliability across services and environments.
• Create AI agents that can assist with incident triage, root-cause exploration, log/trace summarization, and recommended next actions.
• Create delightful developer-facing features and APIs that help engineers explore data, debug issues, and make better decisions.
• Use AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude, Copilot-like tools) as leverage to prototype, refactor, and ship high-quality code quickly.
• Own projects end-to-end: requirements, architecture, implementation, testing, rollout, and iteration based on feedback.
• Collaborate closely with partner teams (product, infra, data, SRE) to understand pain points and translate them into simple, powerful solutions.

What we look for

• This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field

• Strong proficiency in Python, with experience architecting data-intensive applications and robust APIs
• Problem-solving and product sense: you care about the "what" and the "why," not just the "how." You are capable of taking ambiguous requirements and rapidly iterating towards a working solution
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development, such as Cursor, Claude, or similar tools, and enthusiasm for using them to build and ship features faster.
• Practical use of LLMs or AI frameworks to enhance automation and guidance with guardrails and citations

Base Pay Grade - L

Equity Grade - 5

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 monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents). In addition, the employees may be eligible for equity rewards offered by Affirm Holdings, Inc. (parent company).

CAN base pay range per year: $123,000 - $183,000