Trader, Market Making

Blockchain; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits start day 1

Stock options

Home office setup stipend

Monthly card stipend

Job summary

Alpaca, a US-based brokerage infrastructure company, seeks a senior software engineer to help shape the market data platform. You will influence architecture, design scalable backend services, and focus on ultra-low latency while collaborating with a distributed team.

You will work on Kubernetes-based deployments in a cloud-native environment, using Go, C++, and Rust to build robust data products for stocks, options, crypto, and FX data streams.

Qualifications

• Minimum 4 years of experience building large-scale systems.
• Proficient in compiled imperative languages (Go, C, C++, Rust).
• Experience with Kubernetes or similar orchestration (GKE).
• Strong Linux/BSD and shell scripting skills.
• Familiar with TCP/IP and UDP networking.
• Experience with SQL and relational databases.
• Interest in financial markets and low-latency systems.

Responsibilities

• Influence the overall architecture of Alpaca's market data systems.
• Design highly scalable, mission-critical systems.
• Obsess over latency and optimize performance at the nanosecond level.
• Implement backend services and lead architecture for scalability and resilience.
• Maintain code quality and test coverage; participate in code reviews.
• Troubleshoot incidents and bugs; support on-call projects as needed.

Skills

Go

C++

Rust

Kubernetes

GKE

Linux

TCP/IP

UDP

Shell scripting

SQL

Relational databases

Tools

GCP

Job description

Who We Are

Alpaca is a US California headquartered brokerage infrastructure technology company and self-clearing broker-dealer, delivering execution and custody solutions for Stocks, ETFs, Options, Cryptocurrencies, and more, and has raised over $170 million in funding. Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company in multiple countries, and we serve hundreds of financial institutions globally such as broker-dealers, investment advisors, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges. Alpaca s globally distributed team members bring in diverse experiences such as engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals to achieve our Mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We are also deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community. We will continue to enhance and improve our award-winning developer-friendly API and the infrastructure behind it.

Our Team Members

We re a team of 150+ globally distributed members who love working from our favorite places worldwide. Our team spans the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and more! We re looking for candidates eager to join Alpaca s growing organization, who are excited about our Mission of “Open financial services to everyone on the planet and share our Values of “Stay Curious,” “Have Empathy,” and “Be Accountable.”

As a senior software engineer, you will help build and scale 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 market data team is responsible for improving the overall architecture of Alpaca connected to data products such as stocks, options, crypto, and foreign exchange markets. Oversee their public API structure and documentation on both streaming and historical endpoints. The team is responsible for building a cohesive developer-first API and is tasked with planning, ideating, experimenting, and putting into production the new services, and libraries that overcome some of our greatest technical challenges as we continue to scale rapidly. We are looking for senior or staff engineers who are keen on providing quality solutions, have great fundamentals, have proven experience building and architecting at scale, and are not afraid of challenging conventions. This demanding team also requires a deep understanding of POSIX-like operating systems, modern infrastructure, and orchestration practices.

Things You Get To Do

• Influence the overall architecture of Alpaca s market data systems
• Design highly scalable, mission-critical systems
• Obsess over latency (every nanosecond counts)
• Implement backend services and lead architecture where scalability and resilience matters
• Maintain good software quality and test coverage
• Participate in code reviews
• Troubleshooting on 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)

• At least 4 years of experience working on systems at scale
• Experience with at least compiled imperative languages (e.g. Go, C, C++, Rust, etc.).
• Most of our critical services are written in Go SQL or relational database skills
• Familiarity with TCP/IP, and UDP networking
• Proficient with Linux/BSD, and shell scripting
• Excited about what we are building at Alpaca
• Proven track record of architecting and leading medium-scale projects involving multiple teams
• Experience with Kubernetes or other workload orchestration and scheduling systems (we primarily use Kubernetes via GKE)
• Experience with major cloud platforms (we primarily use GCP)
• A passion for financial markets

Who You Might Be (Nice-to-Haves)

• Knowledge of microservice architectures
• Knowledge of clean code principles
• DevOps mindset is an asset
• Cloud Networking experience (BGP, VPC peering)
• Experience in building low-latency applications
• Experience with distributed key-value stores
• Experience with CI/CD
• A passion for financial markets or the desire to learn
• Knowledge of Agile/Scrum methodologies
• Experience with observability, tracing, continuous profiling
• Experience with capacity planning and benchmarking
• Knowledge of eBPF

How We Take Care of You

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options Benefits: Health benefits start on day 1. In the US this includes Medical, Dental, Vision.
• In Canada, this includes supplemental health care.
• In Japan, you are offered local benefits.
• Internationally, this includes a stipend value to offset medical costs.
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card
• Work with awesome hard working people, super smart and cool clients and innovative partners from around the world

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

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