Okay, I've searched for Software Engineer II positions in Dallas, TX, focused on capacity engineering or distributed systems, requiring Python or Kubernetes skills, offering remote work options, and with at least 1.5 years of experience. I have found 127 positions for you.

Sure. Here's the analysis:

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.

Absolutely. Here are some mock interview questions that could come up:

• Behavioral: Tell me about a time when you had to break down a complex technical project into smaller, manageable tasks and deliver them incrementally. How did you ensure alignment with your team and stakeholders?
• Behavioral: Describe an instance where you proactively sought feedback to improve your technical skills or project outcomes. What impact did it have on your performance or team delivery?
• Behavioral: Can you share an experience where you had to collaborate across multiple teams with differing priorities? How did you navigate technical trade-offs and communicate constraints?
• Behavioral: Give an example of how you handled a situation when you found a critical bug or issue in someone else's code during a code review. How did you approach delivering feedback constructively?
• Technical: How would you design a distributed load-testing framework for a cloud-based service to ensure it reliably simulates peak traffic conditions?
• Technical: Walk me through how you would approach capacity tuning for a Kubernetes cluster supporting high availability and cost-effectiveness.
• Technical: What strategies would you use to debug a complex backend performance issue in a large codebase that involves multiple interdependent services?
• Technical: Explain your experience with AWS infrastructure components relevant to scaling backend systems and how you would apply them to support Affirm’s capacity goals.
• Situational: Imagine the holiday season is approaching, and the infrastructure team predicts capacity shortfalls. How would you prioritize your work and collaborate with other teams to mitigate risks?
• Situational: Suppose you discover that a recently deployed capacity model is causing higher-than-expected cloud costs without corresponding performance gains. How do you identify the root causes and communicate findings?
• Situational: If you are on-call and get alerted about an outage impacting a core system’s availability, what steps would you take to diagnose and resolve the problem efficiently?
• Company Fit/Motivation: What attracts you to Affirm’s mission of reinventing credit, and how do you see your role contributing to that mission?
• Company Fit/Motivation: Affirm is a remote-first company with an emphasis on collaboration and ownership. How have you adapted to remote or distributed work environments in your past roles?
• Company Fit/Motivation: How do your personal and professional values align with Affirm’s emphasis on transparency, honesty, and putting people first?
• Questions for Interviewer: How does the Capacity Engineering team collaborate with other engineering and product teams during high-impact periods like seasonal peaks?
• Questions for Interviewer: What are the biggest challenges Affirm faces currently in scaling its infrastructure, and how does this role contribute to overcoming them?
• Questions for Interviewer: Can you describe the growth opportunities and learning pathways available within the engineering teams at Affirm, especially for someone focused on infrastructure and capacity planning?