Senior Software Engineer - Core Trading

About the role

This Senior Software Engineer role focuses on building and enhancing Alpaca's algorithmic trading platform. The work involves designing system architecture, writing code, and making critical decisions to ensure a high-quality and performant user experience. Success in this position means delivering robust solutions that meet customer expectations for speed and reliability in a trading environment.

The role requires a broad technical skill set, encompassing both frontend and backend development, database management, and distributed systems. Candidates should be adept at optimizing for low latency and high throughput, which are crucial for trading applications. This position is suited for someone who can operate across various technical domains within a small team.

Alpaca is a financial services company providing brokerage infrastructure globally, with a mission to make financial services accessible to all. The team is diverse, comprising experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals. This role contributes to a company that emphasizes open-source contributions and continuously improves its API and supporting infrastructure.

The salary for this position ranges from $98,000 to $162,000 USD annually, in addition to stock options and health benefits.

Skills that matter here

• C++: This role requires strong coding skills in C++ for developing low-level, performance-critical components of the trading platform.
• Go: Proficiency in Go is necessary for building various parts of the trading system, leveraging its capabilities for concurrent and scalable applications.
• Python: Coding skills in Python are needed for tasks that may include scripting, data analysis, or higher-level application development within the platform.
• Docker: Experience with Docker is relevant for containerization and managing the deployment environment of the trading platform's services.
• Kubernetes: Knowledge of Kubernetes is applied in orchestrating and managing the distributed systems that underpin the trading infrastructure.
• GCP: Experience with Google Cloud Platform is utilized for deploying and managing the trading platform's components within a cloud environment.

Who this role suits

• A person who thrives on solving complex technical challenges in a fast-paced trading environment.
• Someone with a strong analytical and data-oriented mindset, capable of making critical technical decisions.
• An individual who enjoys wearing multiple hats and contributing across different technical layers, from frontend to distributed systems.
• A professional who values optimizing systems for performance, low latency, and high throughput.

From the employer

Your Role:

• Build Alpaca's algo trading platform to satisfy users' expectations for high quality and performance.
• Design and architect the platform, wearing many different hats in a small team.
• Write code and make critical decisions to deliver the best experience to customers.
• Ensure deep knowledge in both frontend and backend, databases, and distributed systems.

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

• Strong, experienced software engineer with lead experience preferred.
• Coding skills in both low and high level languages: C/C++, Go, Zig, Rust, Java, Scala, Python.
• Low latency and high throughput optimization.
• Experience with messaging queues and message brokers.
• Analytical data-oriented mindset and skills.
• Knowledge of algorithms, distributed systems, scalability, high availability, databases, low latency systems, and concurrency control.
• System design skills with object-oriented data modeling, service-oriented architectures, system abstraction.
• Experience with the development and implementation of Order Management systems (OMS) and Risk Management systems (RMS).

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.