Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Lake Analytics Platform) at Affirm
$173,000–$255,000from the description
Jul 10, 2026
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Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A backend-leaning platform engineering role focused on building and operating the application and tooling layer of a large-scale data infrastructure. Day-to-day work spans containerized deployments, CI/CD pipelines, self-service developer tooling, data access governance on analytical platforms like Snowflake or Databricks, and observability systems. The role also contributes to emerging areas such as semantic layer infrastructure and AI-integrated data tooling, and includes on-call responsibilities.
Senior level · Remote · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 3,350 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (database architects). range 1,400–5,000
Applicant volume Heavy — This req sits in a large pool with little in its requirements to thin it, and auto-apply tools fire at everything in the occupation. Applying early and leading with the rare skills below is what gets read.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $142,568 (middle half $111,775–$173,013). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
SOC classification is a genuine judgment call: the role sits at the intersection of data platform engineering (15-1243) and general software/platform development (15-1252). The primary day-to-day work — designing access control, governance, and compute management on analytical platforms (Snowflake/Databricks/BigQuery) — tips toward 15-1243, but the heavy emphasis on building internal developer tooling, CI/CD pipelines, containerized services, and backend Python services is squarely 15-1252.
Compensation is quoted in two US geographic tiers: $195,000–$255,000/yr for CA, WA, NY, NJ, and CT; $173,000–$233,000/yr for all other US states. The lower bound of the broader range is used for the bottom of the pay band and the upper bound of the higher-cost range for the top of the pay band.
Buildkite and GitHub Actions are listed as examples of CI/CD tooling ('Buildkite, GitHub Actions, or similar') under the requirements section; they are captured as a single preferred skill with alternatives rather than hard gates on a specific tool, since the JD explicitly signals interchangeability.
LLMs and semantic layer familiarity appear under 'Agentic and AI-Ready Data Tools' framed as 'familiarity with or interest in' — explicitly aspirational rather than a hard gate.
The JD states 'equivalent practical experience or a Bachelor's degree,' so no minimum degree is hard-required.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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