Manager, Software Engineering - Resilience Engineering

About Affirm and the Role

Affirm is reshaping the credit industry by creating transparent, consumer-friendly financing options without hidden fees or interest compounding. We are currently looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to direct our Resilience Engineering team. This critical leadership position ensures the robustness and dependability of our live systems by applying proactive validation approaches such as production load testing and chaos engineering.

Key Responsibilities

• Set and drive the strategic vision for resilience engineering at Affirm, emphasizing production load testing and chaos engineering as core engineering disciplines.
• Lead, coach, and develop a team focused on creating platforms and tools that enable safe experimentation in production environments.
• Collaborate closely with infrastructure, product, and security leaders to integrate resilience validation throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Implement best practices for safely assessing system limits and failure scenarios directly in production systems.
• Oversee the design and continuous improvement of platforms that allow controlled production load tests and fault injection with robust safety measures.
• Guarantee the presence of protective mechanisms including isolation boundaries, approval workflows, and automated rollbacks to safeguard users.
• Develop systems that offer comprehensive observability, traceability, and audit trails for all resilience experiments.
• Drive reliability enhancements by methodically uncovering system vulnerabilities through load and chaos experiments.
• Establish tailored monitoring, alerting, and incident response strategies focused on proactive resilience assessment.
• Partner with engineering teams to design and safely run production load tests and chaos experiments.
• Work with infrastructure teams to build guardrails around experimental activities.
• Support teams in adopting resilience best practices by providing scalable tooling, standardized workflows, and frameworks.
• Identify and address systemic weaknesses through cross-team initiatives to bolster reliability and fault tolerance.
• Promote a culture of preemptive failure testing across the organization.

Qualifications and Skills

• Proven track record managing engineering teams in reliability, infrastructure, or distributed systems contexts.
• Direct, hands-on experience conducting production load testing, chaos engineering, or validating large-scale systems.
• Familiarity with chaos engineering platforms such as Gremlin, Harness, or similar products.
• Deep understanding of distributed system failure modes including issues like latency, partial failures, and cascading outages.
• Experience building or operating systems with rigorous safety features such as isolation boundaries, rate limiting, guardrails, and auditability.
• Knowledgeable in cloud-native technologies including AWS and Kubernetes, as well as observability tools.
• Strong programming skills in languages such as Python, Kotlin, Java, or equivalents.
• Excellent critical thinking abilities, balancing long-term resilience development with immediate business demands.
• Effective communication and leadership capabilities, demonstrated through influencing engineering practices across multiple teams.

Compensation and Benefits

This opening corresponds to Affirms Pay Grade P and Equity Grade 7. New hires typically start near the lower end of the pay scale. Affirm offers a transparent pay system that factors in location, experience, and relevant skills.

Annual base salary range (Canada): $181,000 to $241,000 CAD

The total compensation package may also include monthly stipends for health, wellness, and technology expenses, as well as comprehensive benefits such as fully subsidized medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their dependents. Eligibility for equity awards through Affirm Holdings, Inc. is also included.

Work Environment

Affirm prioritizes a remote-first approach; most roles allow working from anywhere within the country of employment. Employees in roles requiring proximity may work remotely but occasionally need to be present at an Affirm office. Some positions remain office-based based on their responsibilities.

Additional Benefits

• Full health insurance coverage for employees and their families.
• Generous stipends for technology, meals, lifestyle, and family planning costs.
• Competitive leave policies including vacation and holidays for rest and recuperation.
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan allowing staff to acquire shares at a discount.

Inclusivity and Hiring Practices

Affirm is committed to providing an accessible and inclusive recruitment experience for all candidates, including those with disabilities, offering reasonable accommodations when needed. In U.S. locations such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, Affirm adheres to fair chance hiring laws, considering applicants with arrest or conviction records.

By submitting an application, candidates consent to Affirm’s privacy practices regarding the use and storage of personal data.