Senior Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Online Storage)

View full description

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a proven track record of delivering complex software solutions that improve availability, performance and scalability of the infrastructure
• 6+ years of hands-on experience with MySQL and Distributed SQL, including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts and experience with technologies like consensus algorithms, distributed transactions, and data replication.
• Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to identify, and resolve complex technical challenges and establish long-lasting solutions/processes.
• Proficiency in at least two of Kotlin, Python, Go, Rust, with a strong emphasis on clean, maintainable code.
• Demonstrated leadership and mentorship skills, with the ability to inspire and guide others. You can also work cross-functionally addressing technical challenges and influencing roadmaps outside your direct area of ownership.
• You drive innovation in the platforms you build and operate, and have experience contributing to open-source projects. You are also passionate about engaging with the Distributed systems/ Databases community.
• Strong proficiency in operating automation tools to manage database infra like Terraform and Ansible.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to clearly articulate technical ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities:

• Help design and build a scalable datastore platform, aligning strategies with Affirm's goals, and leveraging experience in creating multi-region, horizontally scalable, globally available, and high-performance datastore solutions.
• Collaborate with other teams on their database needs and provide continuous guidance on design and architecture.
• Participate in an on-call rotation and collaborate with other teams such as SRE to solve production issues.
• Upgrade, cost optimize, and maintain our fleet of databases.
• Lead and develop technical strategies to build and maintain self-service database platforms aligned withAffirms long-term architectural vision.
• Establish the best practices in development of database solutions and management to provide critical support for operating systems at scale. These include schema/data migrations, disaster recovery, observability, sharding and performance tuning.
• Ensure adoption of the best practices to improve production health.
• Stay ahead of industry trends in storage technologies and solutions and identify opportunities to innovate and improve our storage offerings.
• Mentor engineers providing guidance on new storage technologies, development, operations and foster a culture of innovation and technical excellence.