Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend – Compute Platform

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Design and enhance Affirm's EKS platform focusing on cluster lifecycle, node management, and shared cluster components.

• Direct the technical strategy for cluster provisioning, upgrades, and decommissioning utilizing standardized Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and self-service workflows.

• Take ownership of the reliability of shared components such as Karpenter, CoreDNS, VPC CNI, Kube Proxy, Metrics Server, and their CI/CD pipelines.

• Establish and enforce EKS workload safety standards that encompass resource configuration, isolation, blast radius, Pod Disruption Budgets (PDBs), and consolidation strategies.

• Create automated and enforced paths from research and onboarding to widespread adoption and policy-driven defaults.

• Implement observability, baseline audits, and reporting mechanisms to identify pressure points and assess risk mitigation.

• Collaborate with teams across checkout, batch processing, machine learning, analytics, Developer Productivity, Product, Infrastructure, Traffic, and Cost & Capacity Engineering.

• Lead cost and capacity strategies focusing on node scaling, bin packing, and EC2 instance selection.

• Mentor Compute Platform engineers and establish standards for operational excellence.

• Engage in on-call rotations, triage and document runtime Kubernetes issues, and work alongside Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) on production incidents.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 10 years of experience in software or infrastructure engineering with a successful record of delivering complex platform solutions.

• More than 6 years of practical experience in managing production Kubernetes environments at scale, preferably EKS on AWS.

• Profound knowledge of EKS and Kubernetes internals, including cluster upgrades, node lifecycle management, scheduling, and autoscaling.

• Experience in automating Kubernetes operations at fleet scale, covering provisioning, upgrades, node lifecycle, self-healing remediation, and policy-driven enforcement.

• Strong understanding of workload reliability patterns, including resource tuning, probes, PDBs, topology, and isolation constraints.

• Familiarity with platform standards, admission control, and OPA/Gatekeeper or similar tools.

• Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and GitOps or pipeline-driven delivery models.

• Experience in observability, including defining Service Level Objectives (SLOs), metrics, logs, alerting coverage, and baseline audits.

• Solid AWS cloud-native architecture experience encompassing EC2, VPC, IAM, and EKS.

• Knowledge of Terraform, Spacelift, and GitOps-style deployment pipelines.

• Advanced proficiency in Go or Python.

• Experience in developing production-grade Kubernetes controllers, operators, and platform tools.

• Proven history of designing and enforcing standards across various teams.

• Equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field.

🏝️ Benefits

• Equity rewards may be included in the total compensation package.

• Monthly stipends for health, wellness, and technology expenditures.

• 100% subsidized medical coverage for employees and their dependents.

• Dental and vision coverage for employees and their dependents.

• Flexible time off policies.

• Generous holiday schedules.

• Employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) offering discounted Affirm stock.

• Remote-first flexibility within the employee’s country of employment.

• In-person onboarding experience for all new hires.

• Inclusive interview process with provisions for disability accommodations.