Senior Manager of Software Engineering

About the role

Join Affirm as a Senior Manager of Software Engineering, where you will lead the ML Platform engineering organization. This high-impact role requires expertise in distributed systems, modern AI, and platform engineering. You will own the technical strategy and roadmap for the ML Platform, lead and grow a team of engineering managers, and continuously evolve the platform to stay ahead of AI and ML advancements. You will also partner with ML modeling, product, and infrastructure leadership to accelerate Affirm's critical ML initiatives. Key missions: Lead and manage the ML Platform engineering organization, overseeing the development and operation of critical infrastructure for machine learning capabilities at Affirm.. Own the technical strategy and roadmap for the ML Platform, ensuring continuous evolution to stay ahead of the frontier in AI and ML technologies.. Establish engineering excellence across the organization, focusing on reliability, observability, developer experience, and operational rigor. Profile: - Strong systems thinking — comfortable reasoning from low-level infrastructure decisions to broad architectural trade-offs - 12+ years of industry experience in software and/or machine learning engineering, with significant hands-on software engineering experience, including 4+ years managing engineering managers - Experience on the applied ML modeling side is a plus — understanding how models are built makes you a better platform builder - Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent practical experience - Deep expertise in building and operating large-scale ML infrastructure — feature stores, model serving systems, training pipelines, or equivalent - Fluency with modern ML: deep neural networks, transformer architectures, reinforcement learning, large-scale GPU training and serving - Track record of building platforms that meaningfully accelerate the productivity and impact of ML teams - Experience navigating ambiguity and leading through organizational complexity - Strong understanding of data — data pipelines, data quality, and how data shapes model behavior and platform design