Affirm Software Engineer Interview Experience: payments design and poor recruiter communication

After an initial recruiter call, I entered a fintech-focused process. The roughly 30-minute screen covered my background, interest in fintech and BNPL, compensation, and location. A deeper hiring-manager conversation followed, covering past projects, technical decisions, and fit for the specific team.

The coding portion was a 60-minute HackerRank session. Next came about an hour of system design on fintech systems, including ledger consistency, idempotency in payment flows, and loan servicing. The behavioral interview was another hiring-manager discussion focused on collaboration and prior experience. The difficulty felt average for the range of topics, and the structure made the domain clear.

The recruiter process was what colored the experience. The recruiter was unresponsive for days and sent templated updates even after I raised an offer deadline. Later interviews went decently, but the process ended in a rejection and the timeline felt poorly managed. The interviews themselves felt legitimate, but the way I was handled made it hard to trust the process.

Location: Poland. Overall feedback: neutral. Offer status: no offer.