Principal Software Engineer, Traffic & Compute

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’re on a mission to deliver honest financial products that improve lives. To support this mission as we scale, we’re looking for a Principal Engineer to lead the next generation of traffic management, capacity planning, load testing, and compute infrastructure at Affirm.

What You’ll Do

• Define and drive the technical vision for traffic engineering, capacity planning, and compute platforms that enable Affirm to scale reliably.
• Design and evolve traffic management systems (e.g., retries, load shedding, prioritization, routing) to ensure resilience through rapid growth and peak demand.
• Lead strategy for capacity modeling, load, stress, and chaos testing with safety and automation at the core.
• Provide technical leadership across our Kubernetes-based compute environment, service to service communications, guiding improvements in scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Partner with engineering teams to model service load patterns and build frameworks that prepare Affirm for future growth.
• Mentor and inspire engineers across domains, while influencing senior leadership on long-term infrastructure investments.

What We Look For

• 15+ years of software engineering experience.
• Proven success leading large-scale initiatives in traffic management, capacity planning, load testing, and compute infrastructure at organizations with millions of users.
• Deep expertise in building and scaling traffic shaping, cluster management, and reliability systems.
• Strong background with Kubernetes and container orchestration at scale.
• Track record of delivering complex, high-impact infrastructure projects.
• Clear and compelling communicator who can influence both executives and engineers.
• Experience in Fintech or Retail (B2C and B2B) 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: $300,000 - $360,000

USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $267,000 - $327,000

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

We believe It’s On Us to provide an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of individualized support during the hiring process.

[For U.S. positions that could be performed in Los Angeles or San Francisco] Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, Affirm will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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