Software Engineer - Database - Bitnomial

Kraken; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 1,592,000 - 3,185,000; Full time

Job summary

Kraken is building the next generation of open finance infrastructure with a focus on robust, auditable financial services. You will contribute to Haskell-based services powering order, trade, clearing, and settlement systems, designing schemas and migrations while maintaining strict data integrity.

You will work with AWS Aurora PostgreSQL, time-series data, and declarative schema tools to ensure reliable, scalable operations and clear audit trails across the platform.

Qualifications

• Proficient in a functional or strongly typed language (Haskell, Rust, or C++).
• Strong SQL and PostgreSQL, including transactions and isolation levels.
• Solid CS fundamentals: data structures, concurrency, distributed systems, replication, idempotency.
• Willingness to participate in on-call and production support.
• Careful handling of money-related data and code.

Responsibilities

• Build, test, and ship well-typed features in Haskell services across exchange platforms.
• Design schemas, constraints, and indexes for new features with exact numeric types.
• Write lock-safe, reversible migrations for large tables and review peers’ migrations.
• Analyze execution plans and fix slow queries via index or access pattern changes.
• Monitor systems, respond to alerts, and support daily settlement operations.
• Investigate and document production incidents to prevent recurrences.

Skills

Functional programming languages

SQL & PostgreSQL

Data structures & distributed systems

On-call readiness

AI tool judgment

Curiosity and discipline

Calm under pressure

Cross-team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Atlas or declarative schema tool

AWS Aurora PostgreSQL

Job description

Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

The team

Bitnomial is building the next generation US-based global derivatives exchange, starting with digital assets and progressively expanding to encompass a full spectrum of commodities worldwide. Bitnomial operates a US CFTC regulated exchange (DCM), clearinghouse (DCO), and brokerage (FCM). It offers a range of crypto-settled derivatives, including futures, options, and a suite of live perpetual futures, used by brokers, hedge funds, institutions, and trading firms around the world. Bitnomial's exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage systems are written largely in Haskell. In this role you will build the services and data models that record every order, fill, and settlement at a CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse, with the database as a first-class part of the design. You will build features across these systems and design the schema, queries, and migrations behind them.

The opportunity

• Build, test, and ship well-typed, well-reviewed features and fixes in Haskell services across the exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage
• Understand the order, trade, clearing, and settlement flows end to end
• Design schema, constraints, and indexes for new features, using exact numeric types and audit trails so financial values cannot drift
• Write migrations that are lock-safe and reversible on large tables, and review the migrations of other engineers
• Read execution plans, find slow queries from production metrics, and fix the cause in the query, the index, or the access pattern
• Monitor systems, respond to alerts, and support daily operations such as settlement cycles
• Fix the cause of production issues and write down what you learned

What You Bring

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience with a functional or strongly typed programming language such as Haskell, Rust, or C++
• Strong SQL and PostgreSQL skills, including transactions and isolation levels
• Solid computer science fundamentals, including data structures, concurrency, and distributed systems: replication, consistency, retries and idempotency, and how services keep shared data correct when parts fail
• Willingness to take part in on-call and operational shifts
• Care and rigor with code and data that move money. You measure before you tune
• Good judgment with AI tools. You use them to work faster, and you read, test, and understand what they produce before you ship it
• A habit of asking why before changing something
• Sound judgment under pressure, with a calm and methodical approach when production is live
• Collaboration across engineering, operations, risk, and compliance, with a habit of documenting

Nice to haves

• Financial knowledge or experience in trading, markets, or financial services
• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent experience
• Haskell experience, particularly with PostgreSQL-backed services
• Production experience with AWS Aurora PostgreSQL
• Experience with time series or market data at volume, such as tick data, order books, or event streams
• Experience with Atlas or another declarative schema management tool

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Our commitment

Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

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Compensation Range: $96K - $192K