Senior Software Engineer, Backend (ML Training and Serving)

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. About the team Machine Learning is central to how Affirm delivers on its mission, powering decisions across underwriting, fraud, servicing, and personalization. We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our ML Training & Serving engineering team, the team that builds and operates the critical infrastructure that enables models to be trained and served across Affirm. This role sits at the intersection of distributed systems, ML infrastructure, and platform engineering. We value engineers who listen closely, invite feedback, and work effectively across organizational boundaries, while maintaining a high bar for ownership, technical judgment, and execution. Strong candidates care about building reliable shared platforms, improving developer velocity, and creating durable systems that enable teams across the company to move faster with confidence. What You'll Do · You will be responsible for owning and delivering quarterly goals for your team, leading engineers on your team through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, and ensuring that everyone is supported throughout delivery. · You will support your peers and stakeholders in the product development lifecycle by collaborating with product management, design & analytics by participating in ideation, articulating technical constraints, and partnering on decisions that properly consider risks and trade-offs. · You will proactively identify project, process, technology or business issues, advocate for them, and lead in solving them. · You will support the operations and availability of your team’s artifacts by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating when needed, and supporting “keep the lights on” & on-call efforts. · You will foster a culture of quality and ownership on your team by setting or improving 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 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 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. · Experience training and deploying models for production is a nice to have. Base Pay Grade - N Equity Grade - 9 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 - $225,000 USA base pay range (all oth