Senior Software Engineer, Core

Talos; New York (NY); On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Retirement plan contributions

Unlimited Vacation + PTO bonus

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Paid parental leave for 20 weeks

Wellness credit of $50 accrued monthly

Job summary

Talos in New York is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to build and maintain the foundational infrastructure that powers its trading ecosystem. This role involves designing low-latency messaging systems and API layers crucial for real-time trading.

The ideal candidate has over 7 years of backend engineering experience, with proficiency in languages like Go or C++. Competitive benefits include unlimited vacation, medical insurance, and a $2000 bonus for taking time off.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience with deep proficiency in Go, C++, Java, Rust, or similar systems languages.
• Demonstrated ownership of large-scale distributed systems, from design through deployment and operations.
• Strong understanding of concurrency, memory layout, network protocols, and performance implications.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance platform services.
• Build and evolve Aeron-based messaging infrastructure.
• Tackle distributed systems problems ensuring low-latency and ordering guarantees.

Skills

Backend engineering experience

Proficiency in Go, C++, Java, or Rust

Ownership of distributed systems

Strong systems-level fundamentals

Designing systems with correctness guarantees

Technical decision leadership

Comfortable with various abstraction levels

Job description

Institutional Fabric for the Digital Asset Market

Founded in 2018, Talos provides institutional-grade trading technology for the global digital asset market, powering many of the major players in the crypto ecosystem. Our mission is clear: to advance the mass adoption of digital assets by seamlessly connecting institutions to the digital asset ecosystem. We are committed to building the most innovative and trusted platform in the world, supporting the entire trading lifecycle.

At Talos, you’ll find an environment that champions kindness and respect, values diverse perspectives, and upholds inclusivity at every turn. We believe every member of our team brings invaluable insights and abilities that drive Talos forward. In our pursuit of excellence, we foster a culture of trust, integrity, collaboration, and mutual growth.

We are a tight-knit yet globally distributed team of highly experienced engineers and business leaders, with hubs in New York, London, Singapore, and Cyprus. You’ll be part of a hybrid-friendly environment where your unique talents and insights will play a crucial role in building something extraordinary.

Senior Software Engineer – Core

Talos is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Core team, focused on building and maintaining the foundational platform infrastructure that powers the entire Talos trading ecosystem.

This role centers on high-performance, distributed systems engineering: designing low-latency messaging infrastructure using Aeron, building and evolving the API layers (FIX, WebSocket, REST) consumed by product teams across the firm, and maintaining the sequencer and market data distribution pipelines that sit at the heart of Talos’ architecture. You will work on deeply technical problems at the intersection of distributed systems, financial protocols, and infrastructure reliability.

This is an opportunity to go deep on platform craft — shaping the infrastructure that every team at Talos builds on, and solving problems where the margin for error is low and the design space is wide open.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance platform services including API gateways (FIX, WebSocket, REST), and the core libraries that product teams across Talos build on.
• Build and evolve Aeron-based messaging infrastructure for reliable, low-latency communication.
• Tackle hard distributed systems problems end-to-end: ordering and determinism guarantees, zero-downtime deployments, active-active architectures spanning cloud regions, and crash-consistent recovery.
• Work cross-functionally to ensure platform primitives meet the throughput and latency requirements of real-time trading workflows, including market data distribution at scale.
• Provide product teams with reusable service infrastructure to build scalable, reliable, and cost-efficient services.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience with deep proficiency in Go, C++, Java, Rust or similar systems languages.
• Demonstrated ownership of large-scale distributed systems, from initial design through deployment, scaling, and long-term operations.
• Strong systems-level fundamentals: concurrency primitives, memory layout, I/O models, database design, network protocols, and the performance implications of each.
• Experience designing systems with stringent correctness guarantees — ordering, consistency, durability — not just ones that work under normal conditions.
• Own projects end-to-end: take work from problem definition through design, implementation, and rollout, and see it through to completion without needing to be chased.
• Track record of leading technical decisions: navigating ambiguity, defining architecture, making meaningful trade-offs, and bringing a team along on the reasoning.
• Comfortable operating at multiple levels of abstraction, from API contract design down to diagnosing latency spikes at the socket or disk layer.

Preferred

• Experience with Aeron or comparable low-latency messaging frameworks (e.g., Chronicle, LMAX Disruptor, ZeroMQ).
• Hands-on experience building geo-distributed or multi-site systems with active-active replication and regional failover.
• Familiarity with FIX protocol (4.x/5.x) or other structured financial messaging formats.
• Background in trading infrastructure, market data systems, or other latency-sensitive financial platforms.
• Experience with sequencer design, write-ahead logging, or custom persistence engines.

Benefits

You will also enjoy a comprehensive array of competitive benefits, regardless of your location, within our warm, welcoming, and ambitious company culture. Some of our benefits include:

• Retirement plan contributions
• Unlimited Vacation + a PTO bonus: Employees that take 15 days of vacation, with 5 days being consecutive, receive a $2000 USD bonus.
• Bonus and stock ownership
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Paid parental leave for 20 weeks, after 1 year of service
• Global offsites and team outings
• A one-time stipend towards at-home office set-up for all employees
• A wellness credit of $50 accrued monthly, to go towards things like gym memberships, ski-passes, and work out classes.
• A lunch credit of $25 USD towards lunches for days in-office
• Donation matching up to $100 USD annually
• Other in-office perks: Catered lunches on Tuesdays, snacks, and drinks

Talos is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. Talos is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at [e-mail].