Staff Software Engineer - Risk & Fraud Systems

At Affirm, we are reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, offering consumers transparent, flexible buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) payment options without hidden fees or compounding interest.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Fraud Decisioning team, you will take technical ownership of the systems, tools, and real-time decisioning infrastructure that protect Affirm, buyers, and merchant partners from fraudulent activity. In this high-impact, cross-functional role, you will architect, build, and maintain production-grade fraud-fighting capabilities that evaluate risk at critical touchpoints across the user journey. You will partner closely with Product, Machine Learning, Analytics, and Business teams to translate complex risk requirements into elegant, resilient software architectures while mentoring junior and mid-level engineers.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Strategy & System Architecture: Architect, build, deploy, and maintain complex, production-grade fraud decisioning systems and anti-fraud engines.
• End-to-End Delivery Ownership: Lead large cross-functional technical initiatives—owning project definition, technical specifications, task breakdowns, delivery, monitoring, and ongoing maintenance.
• Resilient Code Craftsmanship: Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code that anticipates failure paths, edge cases, and high-concurrency fraud attack vectors.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner directly with Product Managers, ML Engineers, Data Scientists, and Operations leads to convert evolving fraud tactics into scalable technical controls.
• Technical Mentorship & Code Quality: Conduct thorough code and architecture reviews, set engineering standards across teams, and mentor engineers to help them take technical ownership of system modules.
• Hiring & Evaluation: Participate in technical hiring, evaluating candidate skill sets, and shaping the technical standards of Affirm’s engineering interview process.

Requirements

Leadership & Systems Engineering

• 6–10+ years of professional software engineering experience with a track record of technical leadership and mentoring junior/mid-level engineers.
• Proven experience architecting, coding, launching, and maintaining complex, high-throughput distributed systems in production environments.
• Exceptional ability to synthesize complex product, business, and technical requirements into modular, maintainable system designs.
• Deep commitment to software engineering best practices, robust system observability, and defensive software design.

Collaboration & Soft Skills

• Proven ability to build consensus and collaborate across cross-functional partners (Product, ML, Analytics, Operations).
• Clear written and verbal communication skills for conveying technical trade-offs to both engineering peers and business stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct domain experience building fraud detection, risk scoring, identity verification, or anti-money laundering (AML) platforms.
• Practical experience integrating Machine Learning models and real-time feature stores into low-latency decisioning pipelines.
• Experience with high-availability financial systems, payment gateways, or fintech infrastructure.

Total Rewards & Benefits

• 100% Employer-Paid Healthcare: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with 100% of premiums covered for employees and their dependents.
• Equity & Stock Purchase Plan: Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) allowing team members to purchase Affirm stock at a discount.
• Flexible Work & Stipends: Remote-first working model with monthly stipends for home office setups, tech gear, and health/wellness expenses.
• Time Off & Onboarding: Flexible time off, generous holiday schedules, and an interactive in-person onboarding experience.