Senior Staff Software Engineer - Backend Engineering (Growth ML)

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest. Affirm proudly includes Returnly.
The Growth Machine Learning team builds personalized user experiences across our consumer products. Our services power what merchants, items, and shopping experiences users see as well as the marketing communications we use to acquire and re-engage our users. As part of this team, you'll work to develop a deep understanding of our customer and merchant networks and use these learnings to design and implement new product experiences from 0 to 1.
We are seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to build out data-driven personalization features providing relevant, useful content to our users. You will architect, design, and implement new APIs and microservice interfaces to deliver models that decide what users see and when. You will also use your technical skillset to find opportunities to improve the performance and reliability of the systems that drive the user journey from demand generation through purchasing with Affirm. We take a full-stack approach to ML: as part of this team, you will build both machine learning models and the delivery infrastructure that turns model outputs into product experiences.
We are experiencing explosive growth with millions of customers across thousands of merchants in-store and online, and your technical leadership will be a key enabler of that growth. Come join us as we build a beloved, lasting financial services brand predicated on honesty and trust. It's going to be an amazing ride!
What you'll do

• Use Affirm's data to develop and productionize machine learning models that optimize product experiences across search, app personalization, and marketing campaigns
• Architect, author, and socialize our technical strategies for building systems and solutions in a forward-looking way
• Reduce chaos and create alignment across multiple stakeholders and teams as we solve complex problems with nuanced tradeoffs
• Participate in the strategic development of methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for projects and programs
• Own and develop infrastructure that supports machine learning-based products
• Collaborate with engineers within our team and across the organization to build the next generation of personalized consumer products
• Improve engineering standards, tooling, and processes throughout the organization

What we look for

• B.S. with 6+ years of industry experience, M.S. with 5+ years, or PhD with 4+ years as a software engineer, preferably with leadership and influence responsibilities
• You mentor other engineers in a technical capacity and enable them to grow by providing feedback
• You have a proven track record of contributing to high-quality software (design and planning, development, testing, and maintenance)
• Product-centric thinking -- we care just as much about the product experience (ours, our stakeholders', and our company's) as we do the design of our engineering systems.
• You enjoy leading technical architecture discussions and drive technical decisions within your team and beyond
• You communicate clearly both verbally and in writing. If anything, you trend towards over-communication
• You are empathetic to the user experience and thoughtful about what we can do to make it better
• You are people-first. We value team players who make others better and are eager to help

Location - Remote U.S.
Grade - USA32
#LI-Remote
Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company ! The majority of our roles are remote and can be located anywhere in the U.S. and Canada (with the exception of the U.S. Territories, Quebec, Yukon, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories) unless the job indicates a different global location. We are currently building operations in Spain, Poland, and Australia. Employees in remote roles have the option of working remotely or from an Affirm office in their country of hire, and may occasionally travel to an Affirm office or elsewhere for required meetings or team-building events. Our offices in Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Toronto will remain operational and accessible for anyone to use on a voluntary basis, subject to local COVID-19 guidelines.
All full-time jobs at Affirm (excluding interns and apprentices) are tied to a transparent grade-based pay range taking location into account.
[Colorado Candidates] In accordance with Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act , the grade for this position in Colorado is listed above. You can find the Colorado base pay range and benefits here .
If you got this far, we hope you're feeling excited about this role. Even if you don't feel you meet every single requirement, we still encourage you to apply. We're eager to meet people who believe in Affirm's mission and can contribute to our team in a variety of ways-not just candidates who check all the boxes.
Inclusivity:
At Affirm, People Come First is one of our core values, and that's why diversity and inclusion are vital to our priorities as an equal opportunity employer. You can read about our D&I program here and our progress thus far in our 2021 DEI Report .
We also believe It's On Us to provide an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of individualized support during the hiring process.
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