Affirm
Senior
Affirm Senior Backend Engineer, Merchant & Partner Lifecycle — building the lifecycle-orchestrator service
This interview centers on Affirm's Merchant & Partner Lifecycle team, where you'd act as a technical leader building a brand-new lifecycle-orchestrator service consolidating merchant lifecycle orchestration at scale. Expect architecture-heavy questions on Domain-Driven Design, distributed systems, state machines, and event-driven design, reflecting the JD's 5+ years bar and stack (AWS, gRPC, Snowflake, Kotlin, Python, MySQL, Kubernetes).
Step into this interview
Free · a live voice mock calibrated to this exact role
What this interview tests
- Domain-Driven Design and distributed systems architecture
- State machines and event-driven architecture for lifecycle orchestration
- API design (HTTP vs gRPC/RPC) and database design
- Legacy system modernization and isolation for availability
- Cross-team technical leadership and mentorship
- Async communication (tech specs, ADRs)
Common question themes
Design the lifecycle-orchestrator service for merchant state transitions at scale
How would you decompose or isolate a legacy system to improve availability
Walk through a state machine or event-driven design decision you made
How do you align technical scope across teams on a cross-team project
Describe mentoring an engineer through a complex technical problem
How do you use tools like Claude Code in your development workflow