Staff Site Reliability Engineer

ninjatrader; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

NinjaTrader, a leading futures trading platform, is building a Platform Engineering team to ensure availability, performance, and scalability of trading systems powering traders worldwide. You will deploy services to Kubernetes, work with Product Engineering and Operations, and drive monitoring and automation to reduce toil.

The role requires 8+ years in DevOps or SRE, deep Kubernetes and cloud experience, and strong coding in Python, Bash, or Go.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or Platform Engineering roles.
• Expertise with Kubernetes, Docker, and container orchestration.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions or equivalent).
• Proficiency in programming languages (e.g., Python, Bash, or Go) and automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, or Helm.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure, including networking, security, and identity management in cloud environments.
• Knowledge of monitoring and observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or similar.
• Strong collaboration, communication, and leadership skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions across teams and mentor junior engineers.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead for the SRE function, setting technical direction and mentoring engineers.
• Analyze, troubleshoot, and remediate production issues to keep revenue-generating systems running.
• Participate in a weekly on-call rotation, including weekend deployments and market-open readiness.
• Perform initial root cause analysis and remediation of production incidents.
• Build tools that automate repetitive tasks, deployments, and incident responses with minimal human involvement.
• Design reliable monitoring and alerting systems across web, mobile, desktop, and trading platforms.
• Leverage Infrastructure as Code tools to automate provisioning, scaling, and management across platforms.
• Collaborate with product engineering, operations, and cross-functional teams to deliver scalable features securely.

Skills

Leadership

Collaboration

Problem solving

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD

Python

Bash

Go

Ansible

Terraform

Helm

AWS/GCP/Azure

Monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana/Datadog)

Job description

JOIN US ON OUR MISSION TO BECOME THE #1 RETAIL TRADING PLATFORM IN THE WORLD

Welcome to the dynamic world of NinjaTrader! As an industry-leading trading platform and futures broker, we're empowering traders to take control of their financial destiny. How do we do it? We provide cutting-edge products and services that enhance the trading journey. Whether a seasoned pro or just starting out, NinjaTrader equips traders with award-winning software and brokerage services to navigate the world's leading financial markets with confidence.

Our growth story is nothing short of exhilarating. Since 2003, NinjaTrader has been dedicated to understanding and supporting traders on their journey toward trading triumph. Through those efforts, our user base has grown to over 2 million users and we have become the number one rated futures brokerage worldwide.

But we're not stopping there. We're constantly evolving, pushing boundaries, and modernizing the futures industry. Our commitment to innovation means users will always have access to dynamic tools, real-time support, and a community of like-minded traders.

So, why work at NinjaTrader? Here, you're not just part of a team; you're part of a movement. We empower employees to reach new heights in their careers by providing a dynamic culture focused on social connection, professional development, and employee recognition initiatives. Sounds too good to be true? Take it from our employees.

Join us as we redefine what's possible in trading, advocate for our customers, and continue our journey toward becoming the world's top retail-focused trading platform in the world.

What you'll do:

Join our Platform Engineering team, where you'll ensure the availability, performance, and scalability of the trading systems that power NinjaTrader. You'll deploy single- and multi-cluster services to Kubernetes, partnering with Product Engineering and Technical Operations to strengthen monitoring, reduce operational toil, and keep our revenue-generating systems running for traders around the world. Working alongside technical leadership, you'll help maintain 99.95% uptime and high performance across the trading platform.

In this role you will:

• Serve as the technical lead for the SRE function, setting technical direction and mentoring engineers across reliability initiatives
• Analyze, troubleshoot, and remediate production issues with a systematic problem-solving approach to keep revenue-generating systems running
• Participate in a weekly 12x7 on-call rotation, including weekend deployments and checkouts before markets open on Sundays
• Perform initial root cause analysis and remediation of production incidents
• Build tools that automate repetitive tasks, deployments, and incident responses with the goal of minimal human involvement
• Design reliable monitoring and alerting systems with Product and QA teams, establishing and tracking SLIs/SLOs across web, mobile, desktop, and trading platforms
• Leverage Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform to automate provisioning, scaling, and management across all platforms
• Collaborate with Product Engineering, Operations, and other cross-functional teams to deliver features on time while meeting scalability, security, and performance requirements
• Implement security and compliance best practices (e.g., SOC 2, PCI DSS) throughout the software delivery lifecycle for web, mobile, and desktop deployments

What you’ll need:

• 8+ years of experience in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or Platform Engineering roles
• Expertise with Kubernetes, Docker, and container orchestration
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions or equivalent)
• Proficiency in programming languages (e.g., Python, Bash, or Go) and automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, or Helm
• Hands-on experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure, including in-depth knowledge of networking, security, and identity management in cloud environments
• Knowledge of monitoring and observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or similar
• Strong collaboration, communication, and leadership skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions across teams and mentor junior engineers

Bonus points for:

• Trading industry experience
• Contributions to open-source projects

Compensation:

The salary range for this role will be $160,000.00 - $210,000.00 USD. In addition, this position will also receive an annual target bonus of 12%. Bonus pay at NinjaTrader is based on individual performance (50%) as well as company/team performance (50%).

Salary and bonus earnings are only two components of the total compensation package offered by NinjaTrader. NinjaTrader offers a 401K plan throug