Backend Engineer, Sr. – WFH

MySQL
UNITED STATES
October 5, 2026
Full Time
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Job Description

Company: Torentify
Location: United States
Workplace Type: Remote
Employment Type: Full-time
Pay / Compensation: $173,000 – $255,000 per year

About the Role

Affirm is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Data and Storage Services team and help build, operate, and scale mission-critical online storage infrastructure. The team provides managed OLTP database platforms used across Affirm services, including Relational DB (MySQL), Key-Value storage (DynamoDB), Distributed SQL (TiDB), and Cache (Redis).

In this role, you will architect and scale relational and distributed SQL databases while improving how this critical infrastructure is built, productionized, operated, and maintained. You will have significant ownership over technical direction and team goals while collaborating with engineering, product management, design, analytics, and other stakeholders.

What You’ll Do / Key Responsibilities

  • Build and operate the control plane for large-scale distributed SQL databases such as MySQL and TiDB.
  • Automate database provisioning, failover, backups, and upgrades end-to-end.
  • Design and execute reliability-focused schema and data migrations across multi-tenant database clusters with zero downtime.
  • Own and optimize the networking stack connecting services to storage on Kubernetes, including connection proxies such as ProxySQL.
  • Tune database connectivity for latency, resilience, and failover.
  • Own and deliver quarterly team goals and lead engineers through ambiguous, open-ended technical problems.
  • Collaborate with product management, design, and analytics during ideation, technical planning, and decision-making.
  • Identify and lead solutions for project, process, technology, and business issues.
  • Create and monitor operational metrics, escalate issues when necessary, and support on-call and operational efforts.
  • Establish and improve code review and design standards.
  • Promote engineering quality and ownership through technical writing and tech talks.
  • Mentor and develop team members through feedback, guidance, and leading by example.
  • Define technical plans for significant features and system components using simple, elegant, and extensible designs.
  • Develop tools and practices that enable safe changes across large codebases.

Requirements & Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.
  • 5+ years of experience as a software engineer.
  • Experience designing, developing, and launching backend systems at scale.
  • Experience with technologies such as Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Terraform, and Kubernetes.
  • In-depth, hands-on experience with large-scale database deployments in production environments.
  • Expertise in distributed databases and database technologies.
  • Strong understanding of distributed database architecture, data modeling, and performance tuning.
  • Expertise in SQL tuning and performance optimization techniques.
  • Experience with database benchmarking, load testing, and capacity planning.
  • Familiarity with connection poolers and proxies such as ProxySQL, RDS Proxy, PgBouncer, or PgDog.
  • Experience building database control-plane or automation tooling for provisioning, failover, upgrades, or schema migrations.
  • Experience executing zero-downtime migrations and major version upgrades on production databases.
  • Experience building CLI tooling or runbooks to make database procedures repeatable.
  • Understanding of Kubernetes networking, service discovery, and TLS sufficient to debug service-to-database connection and failover issues.
  • Ability to define technical plans for significant features or system components.
  • Ability to write high-quality, understandable, and reusable code.
  • Experience making significant changes safely within large codebases.
  • Strong ownership of professional growth and willingness to seek feedback.
  • Strong verbal and written communication skills for collaboration with a global engineering team.

Preferred / Bonus Qualifications

  • MySQL expertise is preferred.
  • TiDB expertise is preferred.
  • Experience with other distributed database technologies such as PostgreSQL, Spanner, Vitess, or CockroachDB.
  • Experience building database automation and control-plane tooling specifically on Kubernetes.

Benefits & Perks

  • Base Pay: USA base pay range for CA, WA, NY, NJ, and CT: $195,000–$255,000 per year. USA base pay range for all other U.S. states: $173,000–$233,000 per year.
  • Total compensation may include equity rewards (Equity Grade: 9), monthly health, wellness, and technology spending stipends, and benefits.
  • 100% subsidized medical coverage for employees and dependents.
  • Dental and vision coverage for employees and dependents.
  • Monthly technology and health/wellness spending stipends.
  • Flexible time off and generous holiday calendars.
  • Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
  • 401(k) plan availability.
  • Work Arrangement: Remote-first. Remote within the country of employment, with flexibility built in. Some positions may occasionally require in-person work at an Affirm office.
  • All new hires are invited to attend an in-person onboarding experience.

Affirm is committed to an inclusive interview process and provides accommodations for candidates with disabilities. For positions based in San Francisco or Los Angeles, Affirm considers qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records as required by law. Affirm is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on protected group status under applicable law. US-based demographic and voluntary self-identification surveys are optional, anonymized/maintained confidentially, and are not used in hiring decisions.

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