Senior Rust Backend Architect - Open Finance & Crypto

Kraken; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Kraken is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Consumer team to own the architecture and delivery of Rust-based backend services powering trading, payments, and crypto experiences. You will shape technical direction, deliver robust, scalable systems, and collaborate with product leadership to align roadmaps with business goals.

You will mentor mid-level engineers, review designs, and promote patterns that accelerate delivery.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of backend engineering experience with Rust
• Architectural decisions in production and understanding tradeoffs
• Product engineering mindset with focus on customer experience and metrics
• Mentoring, design reviews, and setting team standards
• Experience driving cross-team alignment and AI-assisted development

Responsibilities

• Own architecture and delivery of customer-facing Rust backend services for trading, payments, and crypto experiences
• Move ambiguous problems into shipped, measurable features
• End-to-end ownership beyond API/backend, influencing customer experience and product outcomes
• Collaborate with product leadership to shape roadmaps and deliver impact
• Drive cross-team initiatives across Kraken’s trading infrastructure and platforms
• Mentor mid-level engineers and establish reusable patterns and standards
• Leverage AI to accelerate development and validate implementations

Skills

Rust

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Kafka

RPC protocols

Asynchronous code

Event-driven architectures

AI-first development

Mentoring

Architecture ownership

Tools

React

TypeScript

Job description

Kraken is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Consumer team to own the architecture and delivery of Rust-based backend services powering trading, payments, and crypto experiences. You will shape technical direction, deliver robust, scalable systems, and collaborate with product leadership to align roadmaps with business goals.

You will mentor mid-level engineers, review designs, and promote patterns that accelerate delivery.