Software Engineer - Market Data

Alpaca; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Health benefits

Home-office setup grant

Monthly stipend

Job summary

Alpaca seeks a senior or staff software engineer to design and scale the market-data systems powering millions of trades. You will own backend services, work across streaming and historical APIs, and help evolve a developer-first platform used by customers worldwide.

You'll collaborate with a distributed team in a fast-growing organization, contribute to architecture decisions, and apply strong fundamentals on Linux, containers, and cloud infrastructure to deliver reliable, high-performance

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or MSc in CS or related field.
• Minimum 3 years of backend software development experience.
• Hands-on with Docker and Kubernetes; DevOps mindset.
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Design highly scalable, mission-critical market data provider services.
• Maintain software quality and test coverage; participate in code reviews.
• Troubleshooting incidents and bugs; contribute to reliable deployments.

Skills

Backend development

Docker

Kubernetes

POSIX/Linux

GoLang

Python

DevOps

Agile/Scrum

Education

BSc/MSc in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

SQL

Linux tooling

Job description

Who We Are:

Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more.

Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 10 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.

Alpaca is proudly backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:

We're a dynamic team of 400+ globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond!

We're searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca's rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.

Your Role:

As a senior software engineer, you will help build and scale the systems and services that form the foundation of Alpaca and empower millions of users who are trading billions of dollars worth of assets.

The market data team is responsible for improving the overall architecture of Alpaca connected to data products such as stocks, options, crypto, and foreign exchange markets. Oversee their public API structure and documentation on both streaming and historical endpoints. The team is responsible for building a cohesive developer-first API and is tasked with planning, ideating, experimenting, and putting into production the new services, and libraries that overcome some of our greatest technical challenges as we continue to scale rapidly.

We are looking for senior or staff engineers who are keen on providing quality solutions, have great fundamentals, have proven experience building and architecting at scale, and are not afraid of challenging conventions. This demanding team also requires a deep understanding of POSIX‑like operating systems, modern infrastructure, and orchestration practices.

Things You Get To Do:

• Design highly scalable, mission‑critical market data provider services
• Maintain good software quality and test coverage
• Participate in code reviews
• Troubleshooting on incidents and reported bugs

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

• BSc/MSc or equivalent experience in Computer Science or related field
• Minimum 3 years of experience of backend software development
• Hands‑on experience with Docker or Kubernetes
• DevOps mindset
• Excited about what we are building at Alpaca
• Knowledge of Agile/Scrum methodologies

Who You Might Be (Nice-to-Haves):

• Experience working with large datasets
• Experience with Kubernetes (CKA or CKAD certification is a plus)
• Experience with SQL
• Experience with IP networking
• Good understanding of the financial market
• Experience with any of the major cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)
• Hands‑on knowledge with shell scripting, Linux & Docker
• Knowledge of microservice architectures
• Knowledge of clean code principles

Our Tech & Infrastructure Stack:

• GoLang (primary), Python
• REST, gRPC, Websockets, SSE
• Docker, Kubernetes
• Google Cloud Services (Google Kubernetes Engine, BigTable)
• Prometheus, Grafana, ELK

How We Take Care of You:

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home‑Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card

Alpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.