Senior Software Engineer - Trading at Alpaca

Senior Software Engineer - Trading

Alpaca, a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more, is looking for a passionate Senior Software Engineer to join our dynamic team of 400+ globally distributed members. We are committed to opening financial services to everyone on the planet and fostering a vibrant community around our award-winning, developer-friendly API and robust infrastructure. This role offers a chance to build and architect the algo trading platform, similar to joining AWS or Heroku in their early days, requiring significant hands on code and critical decision making.

As an experienced engineer, you will be deeply involved in designing and architecting our platform. This requires deep knowledge in both frontend and backend, distributed systems, and broad experience ranging from low to high level in CPU level hardware for high throughput, robust concurrency system design, abstract distributed system architecture for high availability, and object oriented data modeling with long term growth in mind. Previous software engineering experience with trading or exchange systems (OMS, EMS, exchanges, market making, algorithmic trading, quant trading) is required.

Who You Are (Must Have Requirements):

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

Who You Might Be (Nice to Have Skills):

• Prior experience in algo trading (professional or personal).
• Knowledge of the FIX protocol.
• Experience with observability, tracing, continuous profiling, and benchmarking.
• Familiarity with the financial market (exchange, broker-dealers, clearing, etc.).
• Experience with financial ledgers.
• Skills in statistical and quantitative analysis.
• Experience with major cloud platforms, especially GCP.
• Familiarity with Docker and Kubernetes.

What Alpaca Offers:

• Competitive Salary and Stock Options.
• Health Benefits.
• New Hire Home Office Setup: A one time USD $500 stipend.
• 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. We encourage passionate individuals who align with our core values - Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable - to apply.