Lead Software Engineer, Clearing Engineering

Bullish, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 235,000 - 275,000; Full time

Job summary

CoinDesk is a Bullish subsidiary focused on building a robust Clearing Engineering platform. The role involves designing and maintaining high-performance risk systems, ingesting market data feeds, and ensuring regulatory and risk-management alignment.

You will collaborate with global teams to translate complex requirements into scalable architectural solutions. The team emphasizes engineering rigor, end-to-end ownership, and rapid iteration within a regulated financial environment, offering

Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience at a regulated financial institution, building front-office trading system support.
• Deep knowledge of risk management frameworks, margining, default waterfall, MtM, stress testing and backtesting engines.
• Expert-level Java proficiency with fault-tolerant, high-throughput systems.
• Experience with middleware like Aeron and Kafka.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain high-performance risk systems for the Clearing function.
• Architect scalable infrastructure to ingest and transform market data feeds.
• Apply deep understanding of data models across Risk Management, Regulatory Reporting, and Clearing.
• Guarantee system resilience with high availability, disaster recovery, data freshness, and throughput.
• Champion engineering excellence with code quality, automated testing, and SDLC best practices.
• Identify bottlenecks and optimize performance and cost.

Skills

Java

System design

Performance tuning

Aeron

Kafka

SQL

NoSQL

SDLC

LLMs

Ownership

Agile

Tools

Aeron

Kafka

AWS

Kubernetes

Docker

Job description

CoinDesk is the most trusted media, events, indices and data company for the global crypto economy. Since 2013, CoinDesk Media has led the story of the future of money and investing, illuminating the transformation in society and culture that comes with it. Our award-winning team of journalists delivers news and unparalleled insights that bring transparency, comprehension and context. CoinDesk Events gathers the global crypto, blockchain and Web3 communities at annual events such as Consensus, the world’s largest and longest-running crypto festival. CoinDesk Indices offers expertise in digital asset indices, data and research to educate and empower investors. For more information on CoinDesk media and events, please visit http://coindesk.com [coindesk.com] and for breaking headlines, data and indices visit http://coindeskmarkets.com [coindeskmarkets.com] In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated, digital assets exchange. For more information on Bullish, please visit https://bullish.com . CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence.

Reports to: Director, Engineering

Engineering Organization & Culture

At Bullish, we are engineering the institutional standard for the digital asset industry. Our mission is to build a platform centered on security and compliance, requiring a commitment to technical excellence that extends beyond simply delivering code. As a global organization, we set a high bar for those driven to do their best work alongside world-class peers. We value engineers who treat development as a craft and own the outcome from concept to deployment. We expect our teams to bring structure to ambiguity and shape the frameworks that support our global organization. We refuse to compromise on quality and seek problem solvers who thrive on high-impact technical challenges.

The Team: Clearing Engineering

The Clearing Engineering Team builds the mission-critical infrastructure for Bullish Clearing. We mitigate systemic risk through automated default management and ensure operational integrity via high-precision data validation. Our proprietary netting algorithms drive capital efficiency and market velocity, reducing liquidity requirements while accelerated settlement cycles provide participants with faster access to funds. We solve complex distributed systems challenges on a modern cloud-native stack, rejecting "good enough" in favor of the engineering rigor required to operate within highly regulated jurisdictions.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and maintain high-performance risk systems for the Clearing function.
• Architect scalable infrastructure to efficiently ingest and transform market data feeds.
• Apply a deep understanding of data models and workflows across Risk Management, Regulatory Reporting, and Clearing.
• Guarantee system resilience by prioritizing high availability, disaster recovery, data freshness, and throughput (TPS).
• Champion engineering excellence, enforcing high standards for code quality, automated testing, and SDLC best practices.
• Identify and resolve functional bottlenecks and cost inefficiencies through continuous performance profiling.
• Collaborate with global teams (HK, NY)—including Product Managers, Quants, and Risk Managers to distill complex requirements into clear technical specifications.
• Drive the evolution of the platform’s target-state architecture, staying current with industry trends to ensure continuous improvement.

What You’ll Bring

• 10+ years of engineering experience supporting front office trading systems at a regulated financial institution.
• Deep knowledge of risk management frameworks, including margining methodologies (Initial Margin, Variation Margin, SPAN, VaR), default waterfall mechanics, real-time Mark-to-Market (MtM) valuation, stress testing, and backtesting engines.
• Solid understanding of derivatives, including Options, Futures, and Greeks (Delta, Gamma), and their impact on risk profiles.
• Expert-level Java proficiency, with a track record of building fault-tolerant, high-throughput systems.
• Deep experience in performance tuning, garbage collection (GC) optimization, concurrency, and memory management.
• Implementation experience with middleware, specifically Aeron and Kafka.
• Expertise in designing clean data structures, event schemas, and database models.
• Proficiency managing both SQL and NoSQL data stores (e.g., Postgres, Redis, MongoDB).
• Deep understanding of testing methodologies and SDLC best practices, including Twelve-Factor App, distributed HA/DR strategies, and hexagonal architecture.
• Ability to use Large Language Models (e.g., Claude, Gemini) to accelerate development without sacrificing engineering standards.
• A strong sense of ownership and an outcome-oriented mindset.
• Agility to thrive in a dynamic startup environment.
• Commitment to a collaborative culture, evidenced by active mentorship and knowledge sharing.

Nice To Haves

• Proficiency with cloud and DevOps ecosystems (e.g., AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker) and workflow orchestration (e.g., Airflow, DBT).
• Knowledge of FIX and FIXML protocols.
• Familiarity with big data management and data lake ecosystems (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery).
• Experience with BI tools for data visualization (e.g., Tableau, Superset).

Bullish US LLC & CoinDesk Inc. are committed to offering competitive compensation and benefits. The anticipated base salary for this position is $235,000 - $275,000 + discretionary annual target bonus + performance incentives/benefits. Offered salary will be reflective of job related knowledge, skills and commensurate experience.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

In an effort to attract, retain, develop and promote the most qualified individuals, CoinDesk is committed to treating all applicants and employees in a nondiscriminatory manner with respect to the terms and conditions of employment, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status/service, physical or mental disability, or any other classification protected by applicable law. This mandate governs all aspects of employment, including recruitment, selection, promotion, training, education, social and recreation programs, compensation, discipline, termination and access to benefits.

ACCOMMODATION

CoinDesk is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the application process, please send an e-mail to [e-mail] and let us know the nature of your request. Learn more at www.coindesk.com