Senior Exchange Connectivity Engineer - C++ (Low-Latency)

NinjaTrader; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous PTO

401k with 3.5% Company Match

Paid Parental Bonding Leave

Health, Vision, Dental Coverage

Life and Disability Insurance

Job summary

NinjaTrader, a leading trading platform and futures broker based in Chicago, seeks a Sr. Software Engineer II to own exchange connectivity with real-time market data, order routing, and low-latency trade processing.

You will join the Exchange Connectivity team and interface directly with multiple exchanges worldwide. Requirements include 8+ years in trading, strong C++ or Rust, and deep knowledge of FIX, market data formats, and network programming.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in the trading industry, ideally with C++ or Rust.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Proven experience building exchange connectivity and market data systems across multiple venues.
• Strong understanding of network programming, multicast UDP, TCP, and asynchronous I/O.
• Deep knowledge of trading industry specifications (FIX, SBE, market data formats).
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including mentoring and driving change across teams.
• Experience supporting live trading systems in production — diagnosing connectivity issues, latency anomalies, and failover events.
• Ability to deliver robust, tested, observable software in mission-critical environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and support exchange connectivity components across multiple asset classes and protocols.
• Develop and maintain market data handlers, order gateways, and reference data processors.
• Create APIs to expose exchange services to the broader organization via REST, WebSocket, event bus, or other mechanisms.
• Collaborate with the Trading OMS, FCM, and infrastructure teams.
• Optimize for low latency, high throughput, and fault tolerance across trading and data flows.

Skills

C++

Rust

Networking

Multithreading

FIX protocol

Asynchronous I/O

Linux

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering

Tools

Linux performance tools (VTune, perf)

IBM MQ

Job description

NinjaTrader, a leading trading platform and futures broker based in Chicago, seeks a Sr. Software Engineer II to own exchange connectivity with real-time market data, order routing, and low-latency trade processing.

You will join the Exchange Connectivity team and interface directly with multiple exchanges worldwide. Requirements include 8+ years in trading, strong C++ or Rust, and deep knowledge of FIX, market data formats, and network programming.