Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Lake Analytics Platform) at Affirm
$204,000–$290,000from the description
Jul 14, 2026
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Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior technical leadership role focused on building and operating Affirm's Lakehouse Platform, with Apache Iceberg, Spark, and Snowflake at its core. The work spans analytical storage architecture, data governance and access controls, schema management, query and cost optimization, and partnering with analytics, machine learning, and BI teams. Suits an experienced data infrastructure engineer comfortable setting technical direction while remaining hands-on.
Senior level · 8+ years · 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 810 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (database architects). range 490–1,200
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 $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 (7)
The compensation range spans two tiers: $230,000–$290,000/year for CA, WA, NY, NJ, and CT; $204,000–$264,000/year for all other US states. The lower bound of the broader range is reported here.
The role title carries no explicit seniority level ('P' pay grade is an internal band), so advertised seniority is Unspecified. The 8+ years requirement and technical leadership scope support a Senior classification.
SOC classification is Medium confidence: the role is primarily a data platform architect (15-1243) designing lakehouse and OLAP infrastructure, but the emphasis on building and shipping platform software (Spark, Iceberg integrations, transformation pipelines) also fits Software Developers (15-1252).
Python/SQL/JVM languages are listed together as a single programming proficiency requirement; SQL is also emitted separately given its independent prominence throughout the qualifications. The JVM alternatives (Java, Scala) are captured in Python's alternatives field.
Terraform is listed under 'Infrastructure as Code' with the qualifier 'Familiarity with … or similar automation tools', placing it as preferred rather than a hard gate.
The '2+ years of technical leadership' sub-requirement is a role-level qualifier captured in the overall years minimum (8) alongside the primary experience gate; it is not emitted as a separate skill since it names no technology.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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