Staff Software Engineer - Margin & Risk

Alpaca
North America, Europe
Workplace: RemoteFull timeFunction: Software EngineeringSkills: ["Technical leadership","Mentorship","Correctness focus","Communication","Reliability engineering"]

Lead the technical direction of Margin & Risk systems that protect Alpaca and its partners across equities, options, and crypto. Own the architecture and roadmap for portfolio and intraday margin, real-time exposure limits, and automated margin-call lifecycles. Design low-latency, correct, observable services, drive reliability and performance, and mentor engineers while partnering with Product, Brokerage Operations, Compliance, and adjacent platforms.

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FursaFursa
Alpaca
Alpaca
13 hours ago

Staff Software Engineer - Margin & Risk

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Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 4 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Lead the technical direction of Margin & Risk systems that protect Alpaca and its partners across equities, options, and crypto. Own the architecture and roadmap for portfolio and intraday margin, real-time exposure limits, and automated margin-call lifecycles. Design low-latency, correct, observable services, drive reliability and performance, and mentor engineers while partnering with Product, Brokerage Operations, Compliance, and adjacent platforms.
Location: North America, Europe
Workplace: Remote
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Software Engineering
Seniority: Mid level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Own the architecture and technical roadmap for margin and risk across asset classes, including portfolio/intraday margin and options/crypto risk controls.
  • •Design and build services that translate margin methodologies and regulatory rules into correct, testable, observable systems across interacting asset classes.
  • •Lead real-time risk enforcement on the order path, balancing latency with accuracy and safety.
  • •Drive reliability and performance across services, including throughput, state recovery, database load, and failure isolation.
  • •Partner with Product, Brokerage Operations, Compliance, and adjacent engineering teams to define integration boundaries and behavior.

Pay and Benefits

Perks:Health InsuranceEquityHome Office

Key Requirements

  • •8+ years of backend or distributed-systems experience, with evidence of scope and ownership.
  • •Owned a high-volume, consequential production system where defects could cause financial loss or data-integrity failures.
  • •Experience designing and shipping transactional, low-latency, high-throughput systems.
  • •Strong expertise with Go, or deep experience in Java, C++, or Rust, plus willingness to work primarily in Go.
  • •Deep knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred), transactions, consistency, and concurrency; plus event-driven/service-oriented systems (gRPC, Kafka, RabbitMQ) and Kubernetes.
Experience:BrokerageDistributed systemsFinancial servicesAPI infrastructureOpen source
Skills:Technical leadershipMentorshipCorrectness focusCommunicationReliability engineering
Tech Stack:GoJavaC++RustPostgreSQLGRPCKafkaRabbitMQKubernetesTemporalRelational databasesTransactionsIdempotencyObservabilityFeature flags

Company Brief

Alpaca
Provides developer-first APIs and brokerage infrastructure for algorithmic and automated stock trading, enabling fintechs and developers to build trading applications with commission-free market access and custody services.
Industry: Fintech Infrastructure
Company Size: Medium (51 to 250 employees)
Growth: Scaleup
Funding: Series C
Headquarters: San Mateo, United States
Founded: 2015
WebsiteLinkedIn