Staff Backend Engineer Observability

Lead backend observability architecture remotely from Canada, using distributed systems expertise to improve telemetry reliability, performance, and cost.

Affirm seeks a Staff Software Engineer as Observability’s technical lead. You will remain hands-on while defining strategy, mentoring six engineers, and partnering with infrastructure and product teams. The work spans telemetry pipelines, log sampling, wide events, and AI-assisted development instrumentation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own Affirm’s telemetry pipeline architecture at 200+ TB daily
• Design log sampling strategies that preserve incident signal
• Shape observability practices for agentic development and code review
• Define technical strategy and drive cross-functional projects
• Mentor engineers and establish quality and operational standards

Requirements:

• 8+ years designing and launching scalable backend systems
• Experience with Python or Kotlin and distributed systems
• Knowledge of AWS, MySQL, Flink, and Kubernetes
• Telemetry experience with OpenTelemetry, Kafka, or Terraform
• Strong communication and platform adoption experience

Bring backend architecture, observability, and technical leadership to Affirm’s remote Canada engineering organization.