Senior Backend Engineer/Staff Engineer
Posted
Summary
Staff-level backend engineer (IC4) to set technical direction across teams and own ProphetX's most complex, low-latency exchange and trading infrastructure. Day-to-day spans architecture decisions, reliability/scalability, and incident response using Go (preferred), Kafka event-driven microservices, Kubernetes, and AWS on a live, regulated platform.
Role Overview
We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer (IC4) to set technical direction across multiple teams and own our most complex, high-impact systems. You’ll solve ambiguous problems at the platform level, shape architecture for our exchange and trading infrastructure, and raise the engineering bar across the organization.
What You’ll Do
- Define and drive the technical vision and architecture for critical systems that span multiple teams.
- Lead cross-team initiatives from design through delivery, aligning engineering, product, and compliance stakeholders.
- Own the reliability, latency, and scalability of core exchange systems, and lead incident response and postmortems for major issues.
- Make and document key architectural decisions, balancing innovation, risk, and regulatory requirements.
- Break ambiguous, org-level problems into workstreams and delegate effectively to senior and junior engineers.
- Partner with product and leadership to influence roadmap and prioritization with technical insight.
- Proactively seek development opportunities and share knowledge with peers and junior engineers.
What We’re Looking For
- 7+ years of backend experience, with deep expertise in Go, Java, C++, or Python (Go strongly preferred)
- Proven track record designing and operating highly scalable, low-latency, real-time distributed systems in production
- Deep expertise in microservices, event-driven architecture (Kafka), and RESTful and WebSocket API design
- Strong knowledge of SQL and NoSQL data modeling and performance tuning
- Extensive experience with AWS or equivalent, Docker and Kubernetes, and CI/CD at scale
- Experience with observability and incident management for production systems
- Experience in trading, exchange, fintech, or other high-throughput transactional systems is strongly preferred
- Demonstrated cross-team leadership and the ability to explain complex tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences
- Strong communicator, able to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Proactive, growth-focused, and highly adaptable with a strong sense of ownership
Compensation & Ownership
- Competitive compensation aligned to role and market
- Equity opportunities so you share in what we’re building
- A clear connection between impact and reward
Health & Wellbeing
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Flexible time off built on trust and accountability
- A culture that respects your time and avoids unnecessary meetings
Remote & Flexible Work
- Fully remote within the U.S.
- Flexibility to work in the way that helps you do your best work
The Role
- Own the most complex, high-impact systems behind our exchange and trading infrastructure, and set technical direction across multiple teams
- Take on a high-impact IC role with direct influence on roadmap, architecture, and the engineering bar across the organization
- Help scale low-latency, compliant exchange systems on a platform that’s already live and regulated
