Senior Software Engineer – Ledger

Alpaca; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Health benefits

New Hire Home-Office Setup: USD 500

Monthly stipend: USD 150 via Brex Card

Job summary

Alpaca, a US-headquartered leader in brokerage infrastructure, seeks a Senior Engineer for the Ledger Team. You will design, implement and maintain ledger-backed services powering millions of users trading billions of dollars in assets.

The role focuses on building a modern ledger system with a strong emphasis on defect-free, scalable software and close collaboration with cross-functional teams to define and meet ambitious goals.

Qualifications

• 5 years of experience building large-scale systems.
• Strong Go coding skills with a track record of defect-free, maintainable code.
• Experience with IDLs/protocols (e.g., Protobuf) and RPC frameworks (e.g., gRPC).
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (GCP) and relational databases (PostgreSQL).

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with finance, operations and product to deliver high-impact features.
• Build backend components with integrity, maintainability, scalability, and stability.
• Own the delivery of high-visibility features from design to deployment.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to improve system health.

Skills

Go

System design

Protobuf

gRPC

PostgreSQL

Tools

Protobuf

gRPC

PostgreSQL

GCP

Job description

Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more.

Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 10 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We’re deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.

Alpaca is proudly backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:

We’re a dynamic team of 400 globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond!

We’re searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca’s rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact.

Your Role:

As a Senior Engineer, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining the systems and services that form the foundation of Alpaca and empower millions of users who are trading billions of dollars worth of assets.

The Ledger Team is responsible for building a modern ledger system, whose purpose is to maintain a complete and correct view of everything that has ever happened in every account. From a business perspective, the ledger provides a structured and organized system for recording and aggregating transactional data. It plays a crucial role in supporting financial reporting, decision-making, and compliance. From an engineering perspective, the ledger serves as the source of truth for many services in the Alpaca ecosystem.

For this role, we are seeking an experienced engineer who is obsessed with delivering defect-free solutions, has proven experience architecting and building at scale, and who is not afraid of challenging conventions or voicing their opinions. In this role, you will have the autonomy to design and implement solutions to achieve defined goals while actively participating in defining those goals in cooperation with a cross‑functional team.

Things You Get To Do:

• Collaborate with internal stakeholders–including finance, operations, and product teams–to deliver high-impact features/projects
• Build backend systems/components with integrity, maintainability, scalability, and stability in mind
• Own the delivery of high‑visibility features/projects, from design to deployment
• Collaborate with engineering teams to improve the health of Alpaca’s systems

Who You Are (Must‑Haves):

• A seasoned engineer with 5 years of experience working on systems at scale
• Obsessed with performant, defect-free, maintainable code
• A strong problem solver with a proactive mindset
• A collaborator who is capable of creating alignment with technical and non-technical stakeholders alike
• Comfortable working heads-down or tag‑teaming problems
• Strong coding skills, preferably in Go
• Ability to debug issues or, better yet, foresee problems and avoid them entirely
• Experience with IDLs (e.g., protobuf), RPC frameworks (e.g., gRPC), cloud platforms (e.g., GCP), and relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL)

Who You Might Be (Nice-to-Haves):

• Experience in the financial services or accounting industry
• Experience with distributed systems/databases
• Experience with event-driven systems and messaging brokers (e.g., Redpanda)
• Experience working remotely
• Experience working at a startup

How We Take Care of You:

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card

Alpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.

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