Engineering Manager, Trading Backend & AI-Driven Open Finance

Kraken; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Kraken is seeking an Engineering Manager for its Exchange trading backend to lead an 8- to 10-person engineering team responsible for the matching engine, market data gateways, and order entry systems. You will guide the team through evolving from legacy infrastructure to modern, scalable components while staying technically engaged.

You will unblock architecture discussions, contribute to coding when needed, and champion performance, low-latency data handling, and AI-assisted engineering

Qualifications

• Lead and grow a team of engineers delivering core trading backend services.
• Stay technically engaged and unblock architecture discussions across matching engine, market data, and order entry.
• Contribute to architecture decisions and code alongside the team when needed.
• Champion performance and low-latency data handling in trading environments.
• Promote AI-assisted engineering practices within the team and with partners.

Responsibilities

• Lead 8-10 engineers and own core trading backend services.
• Guide evolution from legacy systems to modern stack.
• Stay technically close to the stack to review and contribute to architecture decisions.
• Unblock, review, and contribute to code across multiple subsystems.
• Collaborate with product and other engineering pods to execute roadmaps.
• Advocate AI-assisted practices and data-driven optimizations.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed systems

Low-latency trading

Rust/C++ experience

Linux

Education

BS in technical or quantitative field

Tools

Aeron

Job description

Kraken is seeking an Engineering Manager for its Exchange trading backend to lead an 8- to 10-person engineering team responsible for the matching engine, market data gateways, and order entry systems. You will guide the team through evolving from legacy infrastructure to modern, scalable components while staying technically engaged.

You will unblock architecture discussions, contribute to coding when needed, and champion performance, low-latency data handling, and AI-assisted engineering