Senior Backend Engineer

With our growing customer base and our expansion into new markets and use cases, we have more to build than ever at Affinity as we execute on our vision to put relationship intelligence at every professional's fingertips.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you'll have the opportunity to push our product in new directions while also shaping the next iterations of the features our customers already love. You'll define the future of core pieces of our backend across areas like our data models and APIs. From back-end algorithms to async workers to scalable applications, you'll hone your skills across multiple domains while helping to drive forward the Affinity product and vision.

In this role, you will:

• Be hands-on and in the code for the core areas of our product, iterating on current data models and APIs with performance and scalability in mind for current and future usage
• Mentor other engineers and uplevel them in designing and building robust and scalable systems, as well as building and reinforcing a team ownership culture in observability and maintainability
• Apply modern AI best practices to both the development process and product features
• Collaborate across team boundaries and with product and design teams--you'll have the opportunity to learn from a wide variety of experiences and, of course, to share your own
• Proactively identify areas for technical investment within the team, be aligned with and help define the technical roadmap across engineering to adapt to the changing needs of the business and our customers
• Act as a project lead where you’ll be owning technical solutions and outcomes. This involves collaborating closely with product, design, and technical leads to define the project scope and milestones and distributing work across the team and driving implementation goals.

Qualifications

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every qualification. At Affinity, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role, but your past experience doesn’t perfectly align with the qualifications above, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

• You have 5+ years of experience as a software engineer, including familiarity with the different pieces of technology involved in building modern web applications.
• You have experience writing server-side code leveraging modern OOP practices using Ruby and PostgreSQL. Bonus for additional technologies in our stack including Rails, Sorbet, Sinatra, React, Typescript, NextJS, Chrome Extension Development, or Outlook Addin Development.
• You have a strong understanding of relational databases and the ability to design and implement systems that scale and avoid performance bottlenecks.
• You've helped your teams to solve high-scale challenges, and have experience working on large migration projects in the areas of data modeling and APIs.
• You care about setting up and owning core systems, with observability and long-term support and maintenance in mind.
• You're excited to work collaboratively within engineering and as part of a cross-functional team.

Tech stack

Our platform is built with React and TypeScript on the front end, and with Ruby and PostgreSQL on the back end. Our infrastructure is hosted by AWS and runs on Kubernetes.

How we work:

Our culture is a key part of how we operate, as well as our hiring process:

• We iterate quickly. As such, you must be comfortable embracing ambiguity, be able to cut through it, and deliver value to our customers.
• We are candid, transparent, and speak our minds while simultaneously caring personally with each person we interact with. 
• We make data-driven decisions and make the best decision for the moment based on the information available.

If you’d want to learn more about our values click here.

What you'll enjoy at Affinity:

• We live our values: As owners, we take pride in everything we do. We embrace a growth mindset, engage in respectful candor, act as playmakers, and "taste the soup" by diving deep into experiences to create the best outcomes for our colleagues and clients.
• Health Benefits: We cover both you and your dependents' extended health benefit premiums and offer flexible personal & sick days to support your well-being.
• Retirement Planning: We offer an RRSP plan to help you plan for your future.
• Learning & Development: We provide an annual education budget and a comprehensive L&D program.
• Wellness Support: We reimburse monthly for things like home internet, meals, and wellness memberships/equipment to support your overall health and happiness.
• Team Connection: Virtual team-building activities and socials to keep our team connected, because building strong relationships is key to success.

Please note that the role compensation details below reflect the base salary only and do not include any equity or benefits. This represents the salary range that Affinity believes, in good faith, at the time of this posting, that it will pay for the posted job. 

A reasonable estimate of the current range is $148,750 to $180,000 CAD. Within the range, individual pay depends on various factors including geographical location and review of experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant.