Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Online Storage)

MySQL
UNITED STATES
October 20, 2026
Full Time
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Job Description

Company: Affirm
Location: Remote
Workplace Type: Remote
Employment Type: Full-time
Pay / Compensation: $173,000 – $255,000 per year (depending on location)

About the Role

At Affirm, we exist for the moments that matter—giving people a clear, predictable way to pay over time, with no hidden fees, no surprises, and no tradeoffs on what matters most. The Online Storage team provides a set of managed databases as a platform, used to persist data for all Affirm services. Our platform enables self-service access to OLTP storage systems, including Relational DB(MySQL), KV(DynamoDB), Distributed SQL(TiDB) and Cache(Redis). We are looking for a talented Senior Software Engineer who can architect, build and scale Relational and Distributed SQL Databases identifying opportunities to improve how we build, productionize, operate and improve this mission-critical infrastructure to unlock substantial value within our business.

What You’ll Do / Key Responsibilities

  • Build and Operate Control Planes: Build and operate the control plane for large-scale distributed SQL databases such as MySQL and TiDB, automating provisioning, failover, backups and upgrades end to end.
  • Execute Zero-Downtime Migrations: Design and execute reliability-focused schema and data migrations across multi-tenant database clusters, with zero downtime for the products that depend on them.
  • Manage Networking and Proxies: Own the networking stack that connects services to storage on Kubernetes, including connection proxies such as ProxySQL, and tune it for latency, resilience and failover.
  • Drive Team Goals and Strategy: Own and deliver quarterly goals, leading engineers through ambiguity to solve open-ended problems, and ensuring that everyone is supported throughout delivery.
  • Collaborate on Product Lifecycle: Support peers and stakeholders by participating in ideation, articulating technical constraints, and partnering on decisions that properly consider risks and trade-offs.
  • Ensure System Operations and Availability: Support operations and availability by creating and monitoring metrics, escalating when needed, and supporting on-call and “keep the lights on” efforts.
  • Foster Engineering Standards: Promote a culture of quality and ownership by setting or improving code review and design standards across the team.

Requirements & Qualifications

  • 5+ years of total experience as a software engineer.
  • Experience in designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale using technologies like Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Terraform, and Kubernetes.
  • In-depth, hands-on experience with large-scale database deployments in a production environment.
  • Expertise in distributed databases and database technologies such as MySQL (Preferred), TiDB (Preferred), Postgres, Spanner, Vitess, CockroachDB, etc.
  • Solid understanding of distributed database architecture, data modeling, and performance tuning, particularly in SQL tuning and optimization.
  • Experience with database benchmarking, load testing, and capacity planning.
  • Familiarity with connection poolers and proxies such as ProxySQL, RDS Proxy, PgBouncer, PgDog, etc.
  • Experience building control-plane or automation tooling for databases on Kubernetes.
  • Strong experience executing zero-downtime migrations and major version upgrades on production databases.
  • Equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Benefits & Perks

  • Health coverage at no cost: 100% coverage of premiums for employees and dependents (medical, dental, and vision).
  • Spending stipends: Monthly stipends to support your tech setup, health, and wellness options.
  • Time off to recharge: Flexible time off and generous holiday calendars.
  • Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP): Buy Affirm stock at a discount.

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