Software Engineer II, Backend (ML Training & Serving) at Affirm
$146,000–$225,000from the description
Jul 12, 2026
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Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A backend software engineering role focused on building and maintaining the shared infrastructure that supports machine learning model training and serving across a fintech platform. Day-to-day work involves distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and platform tooling, with an emphasis on reliability, developer productivity, and cross-team collaboration. Suited to engineers with around two or more years of backend experience and familiarity with distributed systems concepts.
Junior level · 2+ years · Remote · Full-time
Advertised as Mid, but the requirements read as Junior.
“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 29,400 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 17,700–44,100
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). 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)
The posting titles this role 'Software Engineer II', which maps to a Mid advertised level, but the experience threshold is only 1.5+ years — consistent with a Junior/early-Mid engineer. Seniority is assessed as Junior based on the low experience floor and the explicit framing that the engineer works 'with the support of your team's tech lead and manager'.
Compensation is quoted in two US geographic tiers: $165,000–$225,000/yr for CA, WA, NY, NJ, and CT; $146,000–$206,000/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 for the top of the pay band.
Python and Kotlin are presented as interchangeable ('proficient in one of Python or Kotlin'); Python is listed as the primary with Kotlin as the alternative.
AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes appear in the requirements section under 'familiar with the building blocks of distributed systems, and the technologies like AWS, MySQL and Kubernetes.' The qualifier 'like' signals these are illustrative examples of the category, but they are the only named tools in a requirements-style block, so they are treated as hard gates on those specific technologies (with the understanding that direct equivalents may be acceptable to the hiring team).
The role is focused on ML infrastructure (training and serving platform), not on ML modeling itself; 15-1252 Software Developers is the right classification. 15-1244 is noted as a runner-up given the platform/operations flavor, but the JD clearly emphasizes building and launching backend systems and infrastructure code.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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