Principal Software Engineer, Traffic Management

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest.

At Affirm, we’ve been very successful in our mission in delivering honest financial products that improve lives. In order to further this mission as we scale, we are looking for a Principle Engineer focused on developing world class traffic management capabilities for Affirm.

What You’ll Do

Set the technical vision and strategy for the next generation of traffic management, capacity planning, and load testing capabilities and practices at Affirm.
Safely build and expand our traffic management capabilities by applying a deep understanding of traffic management: gentle retries, circuit breakers, load shedding, and load prioritization.
Collaborate with the broader engineering organization to understand service load: from day to day operations to peak events. Then develop and rollout next generation capacity models and load testing frameworks.
Champion innovative, scalable, and delightful solutions across the engineering organization
Promote a strong culture of innovation, drive evaluation, development and roll out of new technologies/frameworks. Actively research, brainstorm, prototype, and present ideas.

This role requires an engineer who can work at multiple levels: effectively convey a clear vision, influence senior leadership to focus on strategic investments, and lead fellow engineers to achieve impactful results.

What We Look For

Has been responsible for traffic management, load testing or capacity planning at an organization with hundreds of millions of users.
Extensive experience in designing and implementing traffic shaping, cluster management, and load shedding systems at scale
Successful track record leading and delivering multi-year, highly complex engineering infrastructure projects.
Demonstrated ability to successfully develop and partner with staff and senior staff software engineers.
Exceptional leader who can mentor high potential engineers earlier in their career.
Detail oriented individual who has strong opinions on the technologies being developed by their team and is fully immersed in day to day execution and delivery.
Strong communicator who effectively lays out their technical vision to the broader engineering organization.
15+ years software engineering experience.
This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field
Experience with Fintech and Retail industries for both B2C and B2B (merchants/affiliates) is a plus.
Excited about both our mission to deliver honest financial products and to do it by building a meritocracy.

Base Pay Grade - T

Equity Grade - 18

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: $260,000 - $340,000

USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $230,000 - $310,000

Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company! The majority of our roles are remote and you can work almost anywhere within the country of employment. Affirmers in proximal roles have the flexibility to work remotely, but will occasionally be required to work out of their assigned Affirm office. A limited number of roles remain office-based due to the nature of their job responsibilities.

Benefits

We’re extremely proud to offer competitive benefits that are anchored to our core value of people come first. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

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