Staff Software Engineer, Affirm Bank

Affirm

14h • $204,000 - $290,000 • Remote

About The Position

Affirm is building its own bank and is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to be a technical anchor for a small, AI-native team responsible for the bank's systems. This includes vendor-integrated banking infrastructure, the data platform, and operational tooling. The role involves setting technical direction, owning complex problems, and operating with direct exposure to senior leadership. This is a unique opportunity to shape a new business from its foundational systems, with a high level of ownership and influence over architecture, standards, and technical strategy. The decisions made will impact real customers under a bank charter and define the future of the bank.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with staff-level, hands-on builder credentials.
• Track record of owning ambiguous, high-stakes systems end-to-end through launch and operations.
• Comfortable owning ambiguity at the largest scale on the team, moving fast, making prioritization calls, and taking ownership proactively.
• Balance speed with engineering judgment for critical decisions.
• Fluent with AI-assisted development tools (Claude, Cursor, Codex, agentic workflows) and actively pushing their use.
• Experience building toward a small, lean engineering culture that rewards 'buy over build', a default-deny posture, and standalone-operability.
• Defined architecture and multi-quarter technical strategy for systems beyond own projects, and led execution across engineers and teams without a management title.
• Deep systems thinking across public cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), and cloud data platforms (Snowflake or comparable).
• Regulated-environment experience (banking, payments, securities, healthcare, or similar) with examiner-facing documentation and decisions.
• Direct experience selecting, integrating, and operating third-party platforms under operational ownership post-launch.
• Comfortable acting as the technical representative to non-engineering stakeholders (executives, Board, Compliance, Risk, Finance, examiners).
• Ability to document decisions to withstand audit review.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, able to distill complex concepts for diverse audiences.

Nice To Haves

• Prior work inside a bank, neobank, Banking-as-a-Service provider, card issuer/processor, or fintech with a chartered bank subsidiary.
• Direct experience with a de novo bank launch, an early-stage bank buildout, or a greenfield regulated platform.
• Hands-on experience with a bank core, card processing / issuer processor integration, or digital bank experience integration.
• Hands-on experience standing up a greenfield cloud organization (fresh cloud org, IAM model, data platform) under a tight, default-deny security posture.
• Familiarity with regulatory frameworks: FDIC examinations, GLBA / Reg P, BSA/AML, Reg E, Reg DD, Reg Z, model risk, and third-party risk management.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction across the bank's systems, including cloud infrastructure, data platform, core banking configuration, CI/CD, networking, and the Bank ↔ Affirm Inc integration.
• Own the medium-to-long-term technical strategy for the bank's core surfaces.
• Design, build, integrate, and operate ambiguous and high-stakes pieces of the stack, and own incident response for them.
• Set and hold the bar for code review, design review, and examiner-readable documentation.
• Establish patterns and standards to enable a small team to achieve significant results.
• Treat AI tools and agentic workflows as a core capability for code development, design review, runbook generation, and operations.
• Drive evaluation, integration, and ongoing oversight of third-party platforms.
• Carry critical vendor relationships end-to-end: integration, operations, escalation, and audit.
• Define the integration boundary with Affirm Inc, including domain edges, data flows, and integration patterns.
• Partner with Legal, Compliance, Risk, BSA/AML, Finance, and Internal Audit to ensure compliance is a product feature.
• Design and document systems to meet FDIC and state examiner standards.
• Set reliability, observability, alerting, runbook, incident-response, and disaster-recovery practices.
• Communicate technical strategy, tradeoffs, and constraints to bank executives, the Bank Board, Compliance, Risk, and external Affirm engineering teams.
• Mentor peers, provide feedback, contribute to hiring, and lead by example to help grow the team and raise the technical bar.

Benefits

• 100% employer-subsidized medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents
• Flexible spending wallets for technology, food, lifestyle, and family formation
• Competitive vacation and holiday schedules
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed