Lead Software Engineer, Clearing Engineering

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

Job summary

Bullish seeks a seasoned engineer for high-performance risk systems in New York, requiring 10+ years' experience in financial systems and Java expertise. This role involves designing scalable infrastructure, ensuring system resilience, and collaborating effectively across teams. With a competitive salary of $235,000 - $275,000 and various performance incentives, you’ll be part of a dynamic and collaborative environment focused on technical excellence and innovation.

Qualifications

• Deep knowledge of risk management frameworks and methodologies.
• Expert-level Java proficiency with fault-tolerant systems.
• Ability to implement middleware technologies like Aeron and Kafka.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain high-performance risk systems for Clearing.
• Ensure system resilience and high availability.
• Collaborate with global teams to create technical specifications.

Skills

Java proficiency

Risk management frameworks

Performance tuning

Concurrency and memory management

Microservices and middleware

Agility in dynamic environments

Education

10+ years of engineering experience

Tools

Aeron

Kafka

SQL databases

NoSQL databases

Cloud and DevOps ecosystems

Job description

About Bullish

Bullish is an institutionally focused global digital asset platform that provides market infrastructure and information services. These include:

• Bullish Exchange – a regulated and institutionally focused digital assets spot and derivatives exchange, integrating a high-performance central limit order book matching engine with automated market making to provide deep and predictable liquidity. Bullish Exchange is regulated in Germany, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar.
• CoinDesk Indices – a collection of tradable proprietary and single-asset benchmarks and indices that track the performance of digital assets for global institutions in the digital assets and traditional finance industries.
• CoinDesk Data – a broad suite of digital assets market data and analytics, providing real‑time insights into prices, trends, and market dynamics.
• CoinDesk Insights – a digital asset media and events provider and operator of Coindesk.com, a digital media platform that covers news and insights about digital assets, the underlying markets, policy, and blockchain technology.

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.

Bullish is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are fast evolving and striving towards being a globally‑diverse community. With integrity at our core, our success is driven by a talented team of individuals and the different perspectives they are encouraged to bring to work every day.