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.

Requirements

Kubernetes 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.