Associate Software Engineer

Rothera; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) with employer match

Health insurance

Vision and Dental insurance

Paid time off

Job summary

Rothera in Chicago seeks an Associate Software Engineer to help build our cloud-based, scalable architecture powering instrument management, settlements, and clearing systems. You will work with senior engineers and own specific components as you grow.

You will contribute to a microservices stack, gain hands-on experience with Kafka and PostgreSQL, and participate in on-call rotations. A strong foundation in Java and distributed systems is required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related discipline.
• 2 years or less of professional software engineering experience (or strong academic/internship background).
• Strong proficiency in Java; eager to learn stack including concurrency and JVM behavior.

Responsibilities

• Support design and implementation of core components within infrastructure under guidance of senior engineers.
• Develop ownership and maintain features within a microservices architecture.
• Contribute to distributed systems, gaining experience with Kafka, PostgreSQL, and in-memory data structures.

Skills

Java

Microservices

Kafka

PostgreSQL

On-call

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related

Tools

PostgreSQL

Kafka

Job description

Building markets for the new trading frontier.

Bringing the future into focus.

Rothera is building the premier prediction market in partnership with Robinhood and Susquehanna International Group.

By empowering traders to take positions on the events that shape our world Rothera’s platform harnesses the scale and power of financial markets to produce timely, unique, and effective information discovery for leaders and decision makers to ask and answer their most important questions.

Rothera operates at the frontier, generating market-driven forecasts that turn intuition into insight.

About the role

As an Associate Software Engineer, you will support the development of our cloud-based scalable architecture that powers our instrument management, settlements engine, and clearing systems. You will work closely with senior engineers, gaining ownership over specific components and features as you grow.

What you’ll do

• Support the technical design and implementation of core components within Rothera’s infrastructure, working under the guidance of senior team members.
• Develop ownership and maintain features within our microservices architecture, focusing on clean, functional code and following established patterns.
• Contribute to building distributed systems, gaining experience with Kafka, Postgres, and in-memory data structures while learning from senior engineers.
• Collaborate with team members to understand requirements and translate them into technical tasks, focusing on learning our product and engineering workflows.
• Participate in on-call rotation and incident management by monitoring system health, learning to read logs and dashboards with guidance from senior engineers.

What you’ll bring

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related discipline.
• 2 years or less of professional software engineering experience (or a strong foundational academic/internship background).
• Strong proficiency in Java; eager to learn our stack, including concurrency, memory management, and JVM behavior.
• Familiarity with or academic exposure to microservices, event streaming (Kafka), and relational databases (PostgreSQL).
• A strong interest in distributed systems, with a desire to learn how to build and maintain scalable systems that handle high throughput.

Benefits & Compensation

This position has a base salary of $80,000-$100,000 per year.

Rothera is dedicated to advancing the careers and personal wellbeing of our team members. We are continuously exploring ways to support our employees holistically, including a 401(k) plan with employer match, health, vision, and dental insurance for employees and eligible dependents, paid time off, and much more.

Why you should join the mission

If you want a critical role in a path-breaking company, you belong here.

Rothera values initiative from individuals of all backgrounds. We are proud to be an inclusive workplace and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, age, disability or handicap, sex, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.