Affirm’s AI-native transformation & how it’s driving operational excellence w/ Geddes Munson #259

In this episode, Geddes Munson (SVP of Engineering @ Affirm) joins us to discuss operational / engineering excellence, scaling, and AI-native transformation! We explore Affirm’s approach to operational and engineering excellence and how a 2024 outage became a turning point in refining that focus. We deconstruct “AI retooling week”, the internal tools it inspired (including an incident tracing system), how the AI-native transition is impacting operational / engineering excellence, and how to connect these projects to business goals. Plus, we take a look at their early work building in agentic commerce, infrastructure decisions they made years ago setting them up for success now, how they’re thinking about designing for agent-first experiences.

 

ABOUT GEDDES MUNSON

Geddes Munson serves as Affirm’s SVP, Engineering. Previously, Geddes held several engineering leadership roles at Affirm, including oversight of the merchant engineering group, where he was responsible for the development of Affirm’s solutions for key partners including Amazon, Shopify and Walmart. Prior to Affirm, Geddes held various technical leadership roles at rapidly growing startups including Mixpanel, SingleStore and EasyPost. He received his B.A. from Haverford College, where he started the Linux club on campus. Geddes lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children.

 

Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing.

Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have.

Your agents can read code, but they don’t know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That’s why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for.

Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops.

getunblocked.com/elc

 

SHOW NOTES:

• Defining operational excellence & what it looks like @ Affirm (4:36)
• Understand why your company / product matters to your customers (8:11)
• Key pivot points around engineering excellence @ Affirm (11:10)
• Creating a genuine culture change of operational / engineering excellence (14:27)
• Adopting agentic models @ Affirm (16:30)
• Navigating the balance between transformation, safety & reliability (18:30)
• Affirm’s AI retooling week & hackathon setup (20:57)
• How the hackathon helped quickly change the company culture (23:15)
• Ensuring your practices serve your overall organizational vision & goals (26:11)
• Insights on scaling & increasing CICD investment @ Affirm (28:28)
• Approaches to building agentic commerce products (30:11)
• Strategies for building an agent-first experience (33:33)
• Bridging the gap between engineering & business goals / outcomes (35:44)
• Rapid fire questions (38:46)

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation - New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again.