Senior Staff Engineer - Kubernetes & Aws Platform New

At affirm, we exist for the moments that matter- giving people a clear, predictable way to pay over time with no hidden fees, no surprises, and no trade-offs.
Affirm's Compute Platform team owns the
Amazon EKS foundation
powering thousands of workloads across 90+ production EKS clusters in multiple environments and regions. As a
Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Compute Platform team, you will define the technical vision, fleet automation roadmap, and workload safety standards for affirm's entire container platform. In this high-leverage technical leadership role, you will architect standardized cluster lifecycle tools ( Terraform, Spacelift, ArgoCD ), build custom Kubernetes controllers/operators ( Go, Python ), establish Karpenter autoscaling strategies, and enforce policy controls ( OPA/Gatekeeper ) across engineering teams.
Key Responsibilities
EKS Fleet Strategy & Architecture:
Architect and evolve Affirms EKS ecosystem across 90+ production clusters, driving long-term strategy for cluster lifecycle, node provisioning, and shared cluster components.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Automation:
Drive automated cluster provisioning, zero-downtime upgrades, and teardown using standardized Terraform, Spacelift, and GitOps pipelines ( ArgoCD, kube-applier ).
Core Fleet Component Ownership:
Own the reliability, testing, and automated delivery pipelines for shared cluster infrastructure, including
Karpenter, CoreDNS, VPC CNI, Kube-Proxy, and Metrics Server.
Workload Safety & Policy Enforcement:
Define and automate EKS workload safety standards—covering resource requests/limits, disruption budgets ( PDBs ), blast radius isolation, and admission policy enforcement ( OPA/Gatekeeper ).
Custom Controller & Operator Development:
Build production-grade, custom Kubernetes controllers, operators, and platform tooling ( Go or Python ) that streamline developer workflows.
Observability & Cost Strategy:
Establish platform SLOs, baseline security/capacity audits, and data-driven cost optimization frameworks across EC2 node bin-packing and Karpenter consolidation.
Technical Mentorship & On-Call Leadership:
Mentor engineers across Compute Platform pods, participate in on-call escalations, and lead incident post-mortems alongside SRE teams.
RequirementsKubernetes Fleet & Platform Engineering Depth
10+ years
of professional software or infrastructure engineering experience with a track record of delivering complex, enterprise-scale platform solutions.
6+ years
of hands‑on experience operating production Kubernetes clusters at scale ( AWS EKS preferred ).
AWS & Cloud-Native Mastery:
Deep architecture expertise across
AWS (EKS, EC2, VPC, IAM)
and Kubernetes internals (scheduling, node lifecycle, cluster upgrades, Karpenter, Cluster Autoscaler).
Custom Controller Development:
Expert proficiency in
Go
or
Python
with proven success building custom Kubernetes operators, controllers, and platform tooling used by developer teams.
IaC & GitOps Fluency:
Advanced experience with
Terraform, Spacelift, and GitOps-driven deployment pipelines ( ArgoCD, Flux, or kube-applier ).
Policy & Workload Reliability:
Practical experience designing and enforcing admission control policies ( OPA/Gatekeeper ) alongside workload reliability constraints (PDBs, probes, topology keys).
Observability & SRE:
Strong instincts defining SLOs, metrics/logging coverage, and data-driven baseline audits.
Work Logistics
Ability to work remotely from within Canada.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience designing platform architectures for high-concurrency fintech, banking, or payments infrastructure.
Track record contributing to open-source Kubernetes upstream projects or CNCF ecosystem projects.
Demonstrated experience driving multi-team platform standardization without creating engineering bottlenecks.
Total Rewards & Benefits
Compensation & Equity:
Market‑competitive base pay + equity rewards + Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
100% Subsidized Health Coverage:
Full medical, dental, and vision coverage premiums paid 100% by affirm for employees and dependents.
Spending Stipends:
Monthly Flexible Spending Wallets for tech setup, food, and health/wellness.
Rest & Recharge:
Flexible time off, company holiday schedules, and "Away Days" wellness days to recharge.
Remote Culture:
Flexible remote work environment with dedicated onboarding experiences, learning budgets, and active ERGs.
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