Senior Backend Engineer/Staff Engineer

ProphetX; World Trade Center (NY); Hybrid; USD 165,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Remote work within USA

Equity opportunities

Job summary

ProphetX is seeking a Staff/Senior Backend Engineer to set technical direction across multiple teams and own the most complex, high-impact systems. You will design scalable architectures for our exchange and trading infrastructure and drive engineering excellence across the organization.

You will lead initiatives from design through delivery, maintaining reliability and regulatory compliance while collaborating with product leadership to shape the roadmap and mentor peers.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend experience with scalable distributed systems.
• Experience with microservices, event-driven architecture (Kafka), REST/WebSocket APIs.
• Strong SQL/NoSQL data modeling and performance tuning.
• Proven AWS, Docker, Kubernetes experience and CI/CD at scale.
• Experience in trading, exchange, fintech, or high-throughput systems preferred.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive technical vision and architecture for critical systems.
• Lead cross-team initiatives from design to delivery with stakeholders.
• Own reliability, latency, and scalability of core exchange systems.
• Make architectural decisions balancing innovation, risk, and regulatory needs.
• Break org-level problems into workstreams and delegate to engineers.
• Partner with product and leadership to influence roadmap with technical insight.
• Proactively share knowledge with peers and junior engineers.

Skills

Backend engineering

Go/Java/C++/Python

Distributed systems

Microservices Kafka

SQL/NoSQL

AWS Docker Kubernetes

CI/CD

Observability

Trading/Fintech

Cross-team leadership

Communication

Ownership

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Senior Backend Engineer/Staff Engineer

Application Deadline: 20 November 2026

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Remote - USA

Compensation: $165,000 - $210,000 / year

Description

We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer (IC4) to set technical direction across multiple teams and own our most complex, high-impact systems. You’ll solve ambiguous problems at the platform level, shape architecture for our exchange and trading infrastructure, and raise the engineering bar across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical vision and architecture for critical systems that span multiple teams.
• Lead cross-team initiatives from design through delivery, aligning engineering, product, and compliance stakeholders.
• Own the reliability, latency, and scalability of core exchange systems, and lead incident response and postmortems for major issues.
• Make and document key architectural decisions, balancing innovation, risk, and regulatory requirements.
• Break ambiguous, org-level problems into workstreams and delegate effectively to senior and junior engineers.
• Partner with product and leadership to influence roadmap and prioritization with technical insight.
• Proactively seek development opportunities and share knowledge with peers and junior engineers.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• 7+ years of backend experience, with deep expertise in Go, Java, C++, or Python (Go strongly preferred)
• Proven track record designing and operating highly scalable, low-latency, real-time distributed systems in production
• Deep expertise in microservices, event-driven architecture (Kafka), and RESTful and WebSocket API design
• Strong knowledge of SQL and NoSQL data modeling and performance tuning
• Extensive experience with AWS or equivalent, Docker and Kubernetes, and CI/CD at scale
• Experience with observability and incident management for production systems
• Experience in trading, exchange, fintech, or other high-throughput transactional systems is strongly preferred
• Demonstrated cross-team leadership and the ability to explain complex tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences
• Strong communicator, able to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Proactive, growth-focused, and highly adaptable with a strong sense of ownership

Why Join Us!

Compensation & Ownership

• Competitive compensation aligned to role and market
• Equity opportunities so you share in what we’re building
• A clear connection between impact and reward

Health & Wellbeing

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible time off built on trust and accountability
• A culture that respects your time and avoids unnecessary meetings

Remote & Flexible Work

• Fully remote within the U.S.
• Flexibility to work in the way that helps you do your best work

The Role

• Own the most complex, high-impact systems behind our exchange and trading infrastructure, and set technical direction across multiple teams
• Take on a high-impact IC role with direct influence on roadmap, architecture, and the engineering bar across the organization
• Help scale low‑latency, compliant exchange systems on a platform that’s already live and regulated