Staff Software Engineer, Affirm Bank

About the Role

Affirm is building its own bank — and this role is one of the most senior individual-contributor seats on the engineering team that runs it. We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to be a technical anchor for a deliberately small, AI-native team that owns the systems behind Affirm's bank: vendor-integrated banking infrastructure, the data platform, and the operational tooling that holds it all together.

You'll set technical direction across that surface area, own the hardest problems on the team — including the Bank ↔ Affirm Inc integration boundary — and operate with direct exposure to senior bank and Affirm leadership.

What You'll Do

• Set technical direction across the bank's systems: Own the medium-to-long-term technical strategy for core surfaces — cloud infrastructure, data platform, core banking configuration, CI/CD, networking, and the Bank ↔ Affirm Inc integration.
• Own the hardest problems end-to-end: Personally design, build, integrate, and operate the most ambiguous and highest-stakes pieces of the stack, including incident response.
• Be the force multiplier on a small team: Set and hold the bar for code review, design review, and examiner-readable documentation. Mentor peers and establish scalable standards.
• Ship AI-first: Treat AI tools and agentic workflows as a load-bearing capability for code, design review, runbook generation, and operations.
• Lead vendor selection and ownership: Drive evaluation, integration, and ongoing oversight of third-party platforms across core, data, identity, observability, and card-processing stacks.
• Define integration boundaries: Set domain edges, data flows, and integration patterns between the bank and Affirm Inc while preserving regulatory separation.
• Build for examiners: Partner with Legal, Compliance, Risk, BSA/AML, Finance, and Internal Audit to ensure systems hold up under FDIC and state examiner reviews.
• Own operational posture: Define reliability, observability, alerting, runbook, incident-response, and disaster-recovery practices.
• Influence organization-wide: Communicate technical strategy and tradeoffs with clarity to executives, the Board, Risk, Compliance, and wider Affirm engineering teams.

What We Look For

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with staff-level, hands-on builder credentials owning ambiguous, high-stakes systems end-to-end.
• Experience owning ambiguity, prioritizing ruthlessly, and balancing velocity with sound engineering judgment.
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools (Claude, Cursor, Codex, agentic workflows) and pushing small-team leverage.
• Bias toward simplicity, buy-over-build strategies, and standalone-operability.
• 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) involving external examination and examiner-facing documentation.
• Experience selecting, integrating, and operating third-party platforms.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills across technical and executive audiences.
• Either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor's degree in a related field.

Nice to Have

• Prior experience in a bank, neobank, BaaS provider, card issuer/processor, or fintech with a chartered bank subsidiary.
• Direct experience with a de novo bank launch or greenfield regulated platform.
• Experience standing up a greenfield cloud organization under a default-deny posture.
• Familiarity with regulatory frameworks (FDIC, GLBA / Reg P, BSA/AML, Reg E, Reg DD, Reg Z, third-party risk management).