Staff Software Engineer - Order Handling and Ledger Team

tastytrade; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

tastytrade is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to own backend systems for order handling, ledger, and settlement. You will partner with product to scope features and oversee cross‑functional implementation, while mentoring engineers and upholding high standards.

Based in Chicago with a hybrid schedule, you will influence architectural decisions, drive reliability, and lead on-call efforts in a fast-paced trading platform environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with leadership/mentorship.
• Deep expertise in building backend systems, incl. transactions, idempotency, concurrency, and service communication.
• Ability to learn new languages/frameworks quickly and apply best practices.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own backend systems for order handling, ledger, and settlement flows.
• Collaborate with product to scope features and oversee implementation with cross‑functional teams.
• Provide technical leadership and mentor junior engineers.
• Lead code reviews focusing on design, quality, and performance.
• Stay current with tech landscape and experiment with new tools to improve systems.
• Define engineering-wide standards and be a go-to for critical work decisions.
• Lead troubleshooting of complex production issues and participate in on‑call.

Skills

Technical leadership

Backend systems

Concurrency control

Distributed systems

Communication skills

Tools

Ruby

PostgreSQL

RabbitMQ

Job description

Company Name: tastytrade

Role: Staff Software Engineer - Order Handling and Ledger Team

Location: Chicago, IL - Hybrid (3 days/week in office)

About the Role

The tasty family of companies empowers individual investors and traders by providing educational media, intuitive and powerful trading software, high-speed order execution, competitive pricing, and innovative financial products. The diversity of our offerings and the technology that powers them give our engineers exposure to a broad set of tools and the opportunity to dig deep into specific problems. We are an ideal environment for engineers who are self-motivated, pragmatic, and genuinely enjoy creating and operating large, highly available, performant systems. Our team is lean, and our management philosophy values the autonomy of our people.

At tastytrade, you'll be part of the team that builds our retail brokerage business. We care about the speed and stability of our backend systems. Our architecture evolves continually as the business grows and new technical challenges emerge, always with a focus on practicality and performance.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and own the backend systems behind our order handling, ledger, and settlement flows
• Partner with product to scope features, build implementation plans, and oversee execution in collaboration with cross-functional teams
• Provide technical leadership across the team, both by leading project teams and by mentoring more junior engineers
• Deliver concise, constructive, and thoughtful code reviews covering design and quality, business-domain correctness, stability, and performance
• Monitor the external technology landscape and experiment with new tools to solve hard problems or improve the quality of existing solutions
• Define engineering-wide standards and guidance, and be the person colleagues across the organization seek out for critical work and decisions
• Lead troubleshooting and resolution of complex production issues, collaborating with team members and stakeholders
• Share ownership of production by participating in on-call and treating operability as a design requirement

Who You are

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time as a technical lead and mentor
• Deep expertise in building backend systems, with a strong grasp of concepts such as idempotency, transactions, concurrency control, and reliable communication between services
• Mastery of at least one language and framework, and the ability to jump into a brand-new one and quickly become productive following its best practices
• Quick to absorb new information and become conversant in unfamiliar concepts and technology, with the humility to acknowledge honestly when you're out of your depth
• Pragmatic in your use of AI for research, planning, coding, and code review
• Comfortable with ambiguity and able to work from loose concepts
• A structured thinker who sees the big picture and balances short-term needs with long-term goals
• Self-motivated and biased toward action, with the ability to set priorities and execute in a fast-paced environment
• Precise in your attention to detail, with high-quality standards
• An exceptional written and verbal communicator, skilled at distilling complex material into straightforward language that everyone in our business can understand
• A track record of building and managing relationships with technical teams, stakeholders, and external partners

Preferred Requirements

• Professional experience with Ruby, or with other parts of our stack, such as PostgreSQL and RabbitMQ
• Experience with ledgers, settlement, payments, banking, or another domain where money moves and must balance

Base Salary Range: $180,000-$230,000 The actual salary offered will be based on the candidate's level of experience and qualifications.

Discretionary Performance Bonus: 15-20% of base salary based on individual and company performance.

About IGNA + tasty

IG North America is home to tastytrade, tasty live & tastyfx-a family of brands built to democratize trading and empower individual investors. Founded in Chicago by the creators of thinkorswim, acquired by London-based IG Group in 2021, we combine startup innovation with the backing of a FTSE 100 fintech operating across five continents serving over 1.3m customers and handling billions of dollars in transactions - built on scale, trust, and proof.

From our headquarters in Chicago's Fulton Market, our team builds award-winning trading platforms, produces live financial education content daily, and creates technology that makes complex markets accessible. tastytrade is our retail brokerage for self-directed investing and trading, with tasty live providing content to educate our customers. tastyfx is the fastest-growing forex broker in the US. tastycrypto provides self-custody digital wallets for decentralized finance.

We're a lean, collaborative team that values autonomy, pragmatism, and impact. Whether you're building techno