Senior Staff Engineer Jobs at Affirm with Visa Sponsorship
Senior Staff Engineer jobs at Affirm sit at the intersection of financial technology and large-scale distributed systems. Affirm has a consistent track record of sponsoring work visas for engineering talent at this level, making it a realistic target if you're building a long-term U.S. career in fintech.
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Get Access To All JobsINTRODUCTION
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's engineering team is building a large-scale, highly-available, and global infrastructure that is shared across multiple financial products. Ensuring that our infrastructure is accessible to all engineers is critical to the success of the business. We pride ourselves on our culture across engineering of engaging in thorough technical design review, operational excellence, and capable incident response and analysis.
The Data and Storage Services team is responsible for handling all of Affirm's Data (OLAP and OLTP) requirements and encompasses the entire range from critical online checkout databases all the way to our Batch Orchestration, Streaming Infrastructure, Event Driven Frameworks, BI and analytics tools and systems. Our mission is to provide trustworthy, intuitive, and cost-efficient solutions for Affirmers to secure, store, analyze, and transform data at exceptional scale.
The Data Services organization encompasses the Lake Analytics Platform and Analytics Engineering teams. Our platform powers Affirm's analytical data ecosystem — from the lakehouse and query infrastructure that stores and serves data at scale, to the transformation and modeling layers that make data trustworthy and accessible to the business. We are responsible for Snowflake, FiveTran, Atlan, MonteCarlo, dbt, data governance, privacy controls, and the tooling that enables self-service analytics with an AI focused mindset across the company.
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
As a member of the Data and Storage Services organization, you will collaborate with other teams — including Product, Infrastructure, Lakehouse Infra, Lakehouse Analytics and Analytics Engineering to:
- Architect and evolve Affirm's lakehouse analytics platform, driving strategy around Snowflake, Apache Iceberg, and Spark to deliver scalable, high-performance analytical infrastructure.
- Design and implement robust Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and dynamic data masking policies in Snowflake, ensuring data access is secure, compliant, and auditable across the organization.
- Lead the technical direction of analytics engineering practices, including data modeling, transformation pipelines (dbt), and data quality frameworks that enable trustworthy, self-service analytics.
- Drive data governance and privacy engineering initiatives, leveraging tools like Atlan to manage data cataloging, lineage, classification, and policy enforcement.
- Identify and execute cost optimization strategies across Affirm's analytical compute and storage footprint, including Snowflake warehouse tuning, query optimization, and efficient data lifecycle management.
- Collaborate with product engineering, data science, and business intelligence teams to understand their data needs and provide continuous guidance on design, architecture, and best practices.
- Establish and champion best practices for lakehouse operations at scale, including schema evolution, table maintenance, partitioning strategies, and observability.
- Stay ahead of industry trends in analytical data platforms, data governance, and privacy technologies, and identify opportunities to innovate and improve our data offerings.
- Mentor engineers across the Lake Analytics Platform and Analytics Engineering teams, providing guidance on emerging technologies, development practices, and fostering a culture of technical excellence.
- Participate in an on-call rotation and collaborate with other teams such as SRE to resolve production issues.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience: 10+ years of experience in software engineering or data engineering, with a proven track record of delivering complex data platform solutions that improve accessibility, performance, and governance of analytics infrastructure.
- Snowflake Expertise: 6+ years of hands-on experience with Snowflake or comparable analytical data warehouses, including RBAC design, data masking, query optimization, and cost management.
- Lakehouse & Big Data: Strong experience with Apache Iceberg, Spark, and cloud-native data lake architectures on AWS (S3, EKS).
- Analytics Engineering: Experience with dbt or equivalent transformation frameworks, including data modeling best practices, testing, and CI/CD for data pipelines.
- Problem Solving: Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to identify and resolve complex technical challenges and establish long-lasting solutions and processes.
- Programming Skills: Proficiency in Python and SQL, with a strong emphasis on clean, maintainable code. Experience with Kotlin or Go is a plus.
- Leadership: 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.
- Innovation: You drive innovation in the platforms you build and operate, and have experience contributing to open-source projects. You are passionate about engaging with the data engineering community.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Familiarity with automation tools like Terraform for managing data infrastructure.
- Communication: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to clearly articulate technical ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor's degree in a related field.
COMPENSATION
- Pay Grade - R
- Equity Grade - 15
Employees new to Affirm typically come in at the start of the pay range. Affirm focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure which is based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job-related skills.
Base pay is part of a total compensation package that may include equity rewards, monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents.)
USA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT) per year: $260,000 - 310,000
USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $232,000 - 282,000
LI-Remote
Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company! The majority of our roles are remote and you can work almost anywhere within the country of employment. Affirmers in proximal roles have the flexibility to work remotely, but will occasionally be required to work out of their assigned Affirm office. A limited number of roles remain office-based due to the nature of their job responsibilities.
We're extremely proud to offer competitive benefits that are anchored to our core value of people come first. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:
- Health care coverage - Affirm covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents
- Flexible Spending Wallets - generous stipends for spending on Technology, Food, various Lifestyle needs, and family forming expenses
- Time off - competitive vacation and holiday schedules allowing you to take time off to rest and recharge
- ESPP - An employee stock purchase plan enabling you to buy shares of Affirm at a discount
We 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.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, Affirm will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
By clicking "Submit Application," you acknowledge that you have read Affirm's Global Candidate Privacy Notice and hereby freely and unambiguously give informed consent to the collection, processing, use, and storage of your personal information as described therein.
INTRODUCTION
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's engineering team is building a large-scale, highly-available, and global infrastructure that is shared across multiple financial products. Ensuring that our infrastructure is accessible to all engineers is critical to the success of the business. We pride ourselves on our culture across engineering of engaging in thorough technical design review, operational excellence, and capable incident response and analysis.
The Data and Storage Services team is responsible for handling all of Affirm's Data (OLAP and OLTP) requirements and encompasses the entire range from critical online checkout databases all the way to our Batch Orchestration, Streaming Infrastructure, Event Driven Frameworks, BI and analytics tools and systems. Our mission is to provide trustworthy, intuitive, and cost-efficient solutions for Affirmers to secure, store, analyze, and transform data at exceptional scale.
The Data Services organization encompasses the Lake Analytics Platform and Analytics Engineering teams. Our platform powers Affirm's analytical data ecosystem — from the lakehouse and query infrastructure that stores and serves data at scale, to the transformation and modeling layers that make data trustworthy and accessible to the business. We are responsible for Snowflake, FiveTran, Atlan, MonteCarlo, dbt, data governance, privacy controls, and the tooling that enables self-service analytics with an AI focused mindset across the company.
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
As a member of the Data and Storage Services organization, you will collaborate with other teams — including Product, Infrastructure, Lakehouse Infra, Lakehouse Analytics and Analytics Engineering to:
- Architect and evolve Affirm's lakehouse analytics platform, driving strategy around Snowflake, Apache Iceberg, and Spark to deliver scalable, high-performance analytical infrastructure.
- Design and implement robust Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and dynamic data masking policies in Snowflake, ensuring data access is secure, compliant, and auditable across the organization.
- Lead the technical direction of analytics engineering practices, including data modeling, transformation pipelines (dbt), and data quality frameworks that enable trustworthy, self-service analytics.
- Drive data governance and privacy engineering initiatives, leveraging tools like Atlan to manage data cataloging, lineage, classification, and policy enforcement.
- Identify and execute cost optimization strategies across Affirm's analytical compute and storage footprint, including Snowflake warehouse tuning, query optimization, and efficient data lifecycle management.
- Collaborate with product engineering, data science, and business intelligence teams to understand their data needs and provide continuous guidance on design, architecture, and best practices.
- Establish and champion best practices for lakehouse operations at scale, including schema evolution, table maintenance, partitioning strategies, and observability.
- Stay ahead of industry trends in analytical data platforms, data governance, and privacy technologies, and identify opportunities to innovate and improve our data offerings.
- Mentor engineers across the Lake Analytics Platform and Analytics Engineering teams, providing guidance on emerging technologies, development practices, and fostering a culture of technical excellence.
- Participate in an on-call rotation and collaborate with other teams such as SRE to resolve production issues.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience: 10+ years of experience in software engineering or data engineering, with a proven track record of delivering complex data platform solutions that improve accessibility, performance, and governance of analytics infrastructure.
- Snowflake Expertise: 6+ years of hands-on experience with Snowflake or comparable analytical data warehouses, including RBAC design, data masking, query optimization, and cost management.
- Lakehouse & Big Data: Strong experience with Apache Iceberg, Spark, and cloud-native data lake architectures on AWS (S3, EKS).
- Analytics Engineering: Experience with dbt or equivalent transformation frameworks, including data modeling best practices, testing, and CI/CD for data pipelines.
- Problem Solving: Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to identify and resolve complex technical challenges and establish long-lasting solutions and processes.
- Programming Skills: Proficiency in Python and SQL, with a strong emphasis on clean, maintainable code. Experience with Kotlin or Go is a plus.
- Leadership: 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.
- Innovation: You drive innovation in the platforms you build and operate, and have experience contributing to open-source projects. You are passionate about engaging with the data engineering community.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Familiarity with automation tools like Terraform for managing data infrastructure.
- Communication: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to clearly articulate technical ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- This position requires either equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor's degree in a related field.
COMPENSATION
- Pay Grade - R
- Equity Grade - 15
Employees new to Affirm typically come in at the start of the pay range. Affirm focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure which is based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job-related skills.
Base pay is part of a total compensation package that may include equity rewards, monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for you and your dependents.)
USA base pay range (CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT) per year: $260,000 - 310,000
USA base pay range (all other U.S. states) per year: $232,000 - 282,000
LI-Remote
Affirm is proud to be a remote-first company! The majority of our roles are remote and you can work almost anywhere within the country of employment. Affirmers in proximal roles have the flexibility to work remotely, but will occasionally be required to work out of their assigned Affirm office. A limited number of roles remain office-based due to the nature of their job responsibilities.
We're extremely proud to offer competitive benefits that are anchored to our core value of people come first. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:
- Health care coverage - Affirm covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents
- Flexible Spending Wallets - generous stipends for spending on Technology, Food, various Lifestyle needs, and family forming expenses
- Time off - competitive vacation and holiday schedules allowing you to take time off to rest and recharge
- ESPP - An employee stock purchase plan enabling you to buy shares of Affirm at a discount
We 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.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, Affirm will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
By clicking "Submit Application," you acknowledge that you have read Affirm's Global Candidate Privacy Notice and hereby freely and unambiguously give informed consent to the collection, processing, use, and storage of your personal information as described therein.
See all Senior Staff Engineer Jobs at Affirm
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Senior Staff Engineer Jobs at Affirm.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding Senior Staff Engineer Jobs at Affirm
Align your systems experience to fintech infrastructure
Affirm's Senior Staff Engineers own architectural decisions across payment processing, underwriting, and credit systems. Frame your resume around distributed systems, high-availability design, or financial data pipelines before you apply. Generic backend experience reads weaker than domain-adjacent depth.
Verify your visa type fits Affirm's sponsorship scope
Affirm sponsors H-1B, TN, and OPT for engineering roles, but each carries different filing timelines and constraints. If you're approaching your OPT expiration or STEM extension window, confirm the role's start date aligns with your authorized period before accepting an offer.
Target roles with defined technical ownership areas
Senior Staff Engineer postings at Affirm that reference platform reliability, lending infrastructure, or core API architecture are more likely to support sponsorship through the full Green Card process. Roles with vague scope tend to face more scrutiny at the PERM stage.
Request the LCA filing timeline before signing
Your employer must file a certified Labor Condition Application with the DOL before USCIS can process your H-1B petition. Ask Affirm's recruiting team when they plan to initiate the LCA so you can map your start date to a realistic approval window, not an optimistic one.
Use Migrate Mate to identify open Senior Staff Engineer roles at Affirm
Filter Migrate Mate's job board by company and visa type to surface active Senior Staff Engineer openings at Affirm that are open to sponsorship. Applying through listings confirmed for sponsorship saves time you'd otherwise spend screening out roles that won't support your status.
Prepare credential documentation early for specialty occupation review
USCIS scrutinizes whether Senior Staff Engineer roles meet the specialty occupation standard, particularly in fintech where job duties can overlap with general software engineering. Gather degree transcripts, employer letters confirming your specialized scope, and any professional certifications before your employer files the I-129.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Affirm sponsor H-1B visas for Senior Staff Engineers?
Yes, Affirm sponsors H-1B visas for Senior Staff Engineers. At this seniority level, roles typically involve specialized systems architecture in financial technology, which supports the specialty occupation classification USCIS requires. If you're subject to the H-1B cap, your employer must file during the annual lottery window, with an October 1 start date if selected.
Which visa types does Affirm commonly sponsor for Senior Staff Engineer roles?
Affirm sponsors H-1B, TN visa, F-1 OPT, F-1 CPT, and EB-2 or EB-3 Green Card pathways for engineering roles. H-1B is the most common long-term path. TN visa is available to Canadian and Mexican nationals in qualifying engineering occupations. OPT and CPT support students transitioning from F-1 status into full-time roles before pursuing a longer-term visa.
What qualifications does Affirm expect for Senior Staff Engineer positions?
Senior Staff Engineer roles at Affirm typically require deep experience with large-scale distributed systems, strong architectural judgment, and the ability to drive technical direction across multiple teams. Experience in payments, lending, or financial data infrastructure is a practical advantage. USCIS also requires a relevant bachelor's degree or higher to support the H-1B specialty occupation classification.
How do I apply for Senior Staff Engineer jobs at Affirm?
You can find active Senior Staff Engineer openings at Affirm through Migrate Mate, which filters roles by company and visa sponsorship type so you're not applying blind. Once you identify a relevant role, apply directly through Affirm's careers portal. The process typically includes a recruiter screen, technical system design rounds, and a cross-functional leadership interview before an offer is extended.
How do I plan my timeline if Affirm is sponsoring my H-1B as a Senior Staff Engineer?
If you're not cap-exempt, the H-1B lottery runs in March for an October 1 start date, meaning there's a potential six-month gap between registration and when you can legally begin. Coordinate with Affirm's immigration team early so the Labor Condition Application is filed with DOL and the I-129 is ready to submit as soon as USCIS opens the filing window after selection.