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Job Analysis:
The Software Engineer II (Capacity Engineering) role at Affirm is fundamentally about ensuring that the company's infrastructure can scale efficiently, reliably, and cost-effectively to support its financial products globally. This role sits at the intersection of backend software development and infrastructure optimization, requiring a candidate who is adept at designing, developing, and operating distributed systems with a focus on capacity planning and performance tuning. The candidate will often break down complex, large-scale projects into actionable tasks and deliver incrementally, emphasizing collaboration with product managers, designers, analytics teams, and other engineers. Success in this role means not only delivering technically sound solutions but also enabling the entire engineering organization to maintain uptime and meet service-level agreements (SLAs) while controlling costs and scaling capacity, particularly during peak demand periods like holiday seasons. Key qualifications such as proficiency in Python or Kotlin, expertise with AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes, and strong debugging and code review capabilities are essential because the engineer must navigate a complex, distributed, multi-component codebase and infrastructure environment. Moreover, the soft skills required—clear communication, ownership of growth, and proactive collaboration—reflect the cross-functional nature of the job and the need to influence without direct authority. The candidate will face challenges including balancing infrastructure costs against performance needs, designing scalable load-testing frameworks, and supporting global operations in a remote-first setting. The role demands autonomy in decision-making about capacity tuning and performance trade-offs, alongside a mindset keen on continuous improvement and community engagement within the team, including mentoring and helping to shape technical hiring.
Company Analysis:
Affirm operates as a disruptive innovator in the financial technology space, focusing on transparent and consumer-friendly credit products. This positioning as an innovator in a traditionally complex and opaque industry places high demands on technology to deliver secure, reliable, and scalable financial services. The company culture values honesty, transparency, and putting people first—both in terms of customer experience and employee wellbeing. Being remote-first, with supportive and inclusive policies, Affirm likely fosters a culture of autonomy and accountability balanced with collaboration. For this Software Engineer II position, that means the successful candidate must be self-motivated, comfortable with navigating ambiguity in a highly regulated industry environment, and capable of contributing effectively in distributed teams spanning multiple time zones. The role is nested within a capacity engineering team that enables broader engineering success, giving it strategic importance in upholding uptime and user satisfaction, especially during high-traffic periods. With offices across several global cities and distributed teams, the role provides visibility cross-functionally but likely reports to a tech lead and manager, signaling opportunities to exert influence through technical expertise and communication rather than direct managerial authority. Strategically, this hire underpins Affirm’s growth ambitions by enabling infrastructure scale and performance, aligning with the company’s mission to offer honest financial products with high reliability and strong user trust.