Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Search)

Affirm is building the next generation of its advertising platform and Marketplace experience, with a focus on search, recommendations, and discovery. As a Staff Software Engineer on the Backend team, you'll set technical direction for systems that directly impact how millions of consumers find and shop for products, while also laying groundwork for an agentic platform.

About the Role

This is a staff-level backend engineering position where you'll own the technical strategy and execution for search, recommendations, and marketplace discovery systems. You'll work across product, design, and analytics to balance consumer experience improvements, monetization opportunities, and merchant value. The role offers significant scope to influence both immediate product impact and long-term platform architecture.

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate technical strategy on a year-long timeframe, anchoring your team's work to business-critical projects
• Collaborate with product management, design, and analytics teams to ensure technical decisions address risks, trade-offs, and sustainability concerns
• Act as a force multiplier by advocating for technical solutions and establishing operational processes that scale across the organization
• Ensure team reliability and operational excellence through monitoring, on-call rotations, runbooks, testing, and alerting strategies
• Set and maintain code review and design standards, promoting a culture of quality and ownership both within and beyond your team
• Develop and mentor team members through feedback, guidance, and technical leadership

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and launching backend systems at scale (Python, Kotlin, or similar languages)
• Proven expertise building highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark, Kubernetes, or comparable technologies
• 2+ years of experience with search engines, recommendation systems, or related discovery platforms
• Track record of successfully delivering major features, system components, or deprecations through comprehensive technical and execution planning
• Experience developing consumer-facing features using UI frameworks such as React
• Ability to work comfortably across abstraction levels—from language idioms to large-system architecture
• Comfort operating in ambiguous environments and driving clarity through technical exploration

Benefits

• Remote position based in Canada