Director of Engineering, Trading

About the role

This Director of Engineering will be responsible for Alpaca's institutional trading platform, overseeing its roadmap and execution. The role requires building and scaling an engineering team focused on complex, high-impact systems, while also ensuring alignment with the company's broader institutional and prime brokerage strategy. A key aspect of the work involves evolving the trading architecture to support cross-asset margining across various financial instruments.

The position demands architectural judgment to guide decisions across trading APIs, the order management system, and real-time risk and margin engines. The Director will also establish technical standards for performance, availability, scalability, and operational resilience within latency-sensitive systems. This includes coordinating multiple initiatives across different trading components and collaborating with product, risk, compliance, operations, and finance teams.

Success in this role means delivering production-ready systems that enhance Alpaca's institutional trading capabilities. The Director will represent engineering in executive-level discussions and provide thought leadership in trading and brokerage technology, both internally and through industry engagement. The role also involves hands-on engineering tasks such as code reviews and contributing to proof-of-concept development.

The salary range for this position is between $150,000 and $250,000 USD.

Skills that matter here

• Engineering Leadership: This role requires building, leading, and scaling a high-performing engineering team.
• Institutional Trading: The Director will define and execute the roadmap for an institutional trading platform.
• Brokerage Technology: A deep understanding of brokerage technology, including execution and risk systems, is essential.
• Distributed Systems: Knowledge of distributed systems is needed to set architectural direction for performance-critical trading systems.
• Architectural Judgment: The role involves making architectural decisions across trading APIs, order management, and risk engines.
• Regulated Environments: The Director must balance speed, reliability, and control within regulated financial environments.

Who this role suits

• A leader who can build and scale engineering teams focused on critical, market-facing platforms.
• An individual with a deep understanding of institutional trading and brokerage technology, including cross-asset risk and margining.
• Someone who possesses strong architectural judgment and can balance development speed with reliability in regulated settings.
• A clear communicator capable of engaging effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders at senior levels.

From the employer

Your Role:

• Define and own and execute the engineering roadmap for Alpaca’s institutional trading platform
• Build, lead, and scale a high-performing team of engineers with a strong culture of ownership and execution
• Partner with the Office of the CTO and Global Head of Brokerage to align engineering priorities with institutional and prime brokerage strategy
• Lead the evolution toward a multi-asset trading architecture supporting cross-margining across equities, options, FX, futures, and other derivatives
• Design and deliver institutional trading capabilities, including but not limited to:
• Drive architectural decisions across trading APIs, our proprietary order management system, real-time risk, and margin engines
• Set and enforce technical standards for performance, availability, scalability, and operational resilience in latency-sensitive systems
• Coordinate multiple concurrent initiatives across trading, risk, margin, asset classes, and customer-facing tooling
• Work cross-functionally with Product, Risk, Compliance, Operations, and Finance to deliver production-ready systems
• Represent institutional trading engineering in executive-level planning and decision-making
• Provide technical and architectural thought leadership in trading and brokerage technology, influencing direction internally and through industry engagement
• Hands-on engineering, such as writing PoC code, conducting code reviews, deploying to production, and providing an L3 escalation contact point.

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

• A Director-level (or above) engineering leader with experience owning critical, market-facing platforms
• Proven experience building and scaling engineering teams focused on complex, high-impact systems
• Deep understanding of institutional trading and brokerage technology, including execution systems, risk and margin platforms, and trading analytics
• Experience designing or operating systems that support cross-asset risk and margining across multiple asset classes
• Strong architectural judgment and the ability to balance speed, reliability, and control in regulated environments
• Deep knowledge of OS fundamentals and distributed systems, sufficient to set architectural direction and evaluate designs for performance-critical trading systems.
• Effective partner to senior business, brokerage, and product leaders
• Clear communicator with technical and non-technical stakeholders

How We Take Care of You:

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card

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