Team Lead Engineer - Crypto

Socket.dev

United States

On-site

USD 180,000 - 240,000

Full time

5 days ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Health Benefits

Stock Options

Home-Office Setup (USD 500)

Brex Card stipend

Job summary

Alpaca is seeking a Senior Engineer to lead crypto exchange engineering, covering spot and derivatives with high-throughput goals. You will architect and implement scalable services and collaborate across teams to meet ambitious timelines.

We value engineers who deliver defect-free solutions, challenge conventions, and help shape a regulated, multi-asset exchange. Expect exposure to modern custody, risk controls, and state-of-the-art crypto infrastructure.

Qualifications

Experience building a CLOB exchange, HFT, market-making, or high-throughput, low-latency systems.
BSc/MSc in Computer Science or related field.
Minimum 4 years of backend software development.
Experience with GoLang, Python, C/C++, NodeJS, Java, etc.
SQL or relational database skills.
Hands-on with Bash, Linux, Docker; Kubernetes is a plus.

Responsibilities

Design highly scalable, mission-critical crypto spot and derivatives exchange trading millions of dollars from day one.
Implement backend services and web applications.
Maintain good software quality and test coverage.
Participate in code reviews.
Troubleshoot incidents and reported bugs.
May be on-call to assist with urgent engineering projects.

Skills

CLOB exchange

HFT

Low latency

GoLang

Python

SQL

Linux/Docker

Kubernetes

Education

BSc/MSc in CS

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Git

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, we encourage you to apply.

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

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.

Your Role:

This role is to lead all Crypto related engineering including our spot and derivatives exchanges licensed in the US and Bahamas.

Architect, spec and build the perpetual futures exchange including high-performance matching engine, collateral/liquidation/risk engine, public API, kyc/aml, regulatory reporting, settlement clearing and custody, banking, order management, accounting, analytics and compliance integrations.

Our vision for a regulated, centralized multi-asset exchange is designed with modern custody and risk management measures in mind as we prepare for how regulations will change in a post-FTX world. This is a blank canvas opportunity to design a state-of-the-art crypto exchange with the many synergies arising from our renowned securities brokerage with its unimpeachable track record in safeguarding customer assets. We are uniquely positioned to become the pre-eminent brand in global financial investment infrastructure for both crypto and tradfi combined.

Things You Get To Do:

Design highly scalable, mission-critical crypto spot and derivatives exchange trading millions of dollars from day one
Implement backend services and web applications
Maintain good software quality and test coverage
Participate in code reviews
Troubleshoot incidents and reported bugs
You may be asked to be on-call to assist with engineering projects that are timely in nature

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

Experience building a CLOB exchange, HFT, market-making, high performance matching engines, margin/liquidation engines or other high-throughput & low-latency, regulated, fault-tolerant financial system
Experience in building crypto
BSc/MSc or equivalent experience in Computer Science or related field
*Minimum 4 years of experience of backend software development
Experience with at least one modern programming language like GoLang, Python, C/C++, NodeJS, Java, etc. Our platform is based in Golang
SQL or relational database skills
Hands-on knowledge with Bash, Linux & Docker. Kubernetes experience is a plus
Excited about what we are building at Alpaca

*The position level and title will vary according to candidate's experience and skills

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