Lead Software Engineer

Candidates who are primarily looking for task-based development work may not be the right fit; this role requires technical ownership before during and after implementation.

We are seeking a hands-on Lead Backend Engineer / Technical Lead to help design evolve and extend the backend and middleware systems that support our trading and market data infrastructure.

This is not a ticket-only development role. We are looking for someone who can take business needs operational problems and high-level requirements and turn them into clear technical designs implementation plans acceptance criteria and production-ready code.

You will work on real trading systems involving market data ingestion exchange connectivity clearing and regulatory workflows pre-trade and post-trade processing and internal services that must be correct fast observable and resilient.

The right person is a strong Java engineer who can also think at the system level: understand tradeoffs design service boundaries challenge incomplete requirements define edge cases guide other developers and own technical outcomes from concept through production.

What You’ll Own

• Translate business and operational requirements into technical designs implementation plans and acceptance criteria
• Design backend services and middleware components for trading market data clearing regulatory and post-trade workflows
• Lead technical design discussions and make practical architecture decisions across services databases APIs and integrations
• Write high-quality code for low-latency high-reliability systems
• Define service contracts data flows error handling observability retry behavior and failure modes
• Design and optimize SQL schemas queries stored procedures and data integrity rules
• Integrate with exchanges clearinghouses regulatory systems internal platforms and third-party services
• Review code and designs from other engineers with a focus on correctness maintainability performance and operational risk
• Identify architectural gaps technical debt production risks and opportunities to simplify or harden the system
• Partner with business stakeholders product owners operations QA and other developers to clarify requirements before implementation begins
• Support production systems when needed and use incidents as feedback for better architecture and design
• Help establish engineering standards design patterns documentation practices and development best practices

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with significant backend Java experience
• Strong Java expertise including concurrency collections memory behavior performance tuning and production debugging
• Proven experience designing systems not just implementing assigned tickets
• Experience writing or contributing to technical design documents architecture proposals implementation plans or RFCs
• Ability to define acceptance criteria edge cases failure scenarios and testable technical requirements
• Experience with trading systems market data platforms financial infrastructure or other high-throughput/low-latency systems
• Strong understanding of distributed systems messaging service-oriented architecture APIs and data consistency
• Strong SQL experience including schema design query tuning indexing data modeling and transactional integrity
• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Strong judgment around when to build refactor simplify harden or defer
• Comfort working in regulated or compliance-driven environments

Preferred Experience

• Exchange connectivity FIX protocol proprietary exchange APIs or market data feeds
• Clearing settlement allocation give-up regulatory or post-trade workflows
• Pre-trade risk order routing execution workflows or brokerage/trading operations
• Linux-based server environments
• Message queues streaming systems event-driven architecture or real-time processing
• Observability tools logging standards metrics alerting and production diagnostics
• Cloud or hybrid infrastructure experience
• Experience mentoring developers or serving as a technical lead on complex backend systems

 What Success Looks Like

Within the first 30 days you will understand the core architecture major data flows production risks and current development process.

Within 60 days you will be contributing production code reviewing designs improving acceptance criteria and helping shape implementation plans before development starts.

Within 90 days you will be leading design for meaningful backend changes identifying architectural risks and helping the team move from ticket execution to better technical ownership.

This Role Is a Fit If You

• Ask “what problem are we solving?” before jumping into code
• Can turn ambiguity into a clear technical plan
• Care about correctness latency resilience and maintainability
• Know how to make practical architecture decisions without over-engineering
• Are comfortable challenging unclear requirements respectfully
• Can still write serious production code while operating at a higher design level
• Want ownership of systems not just a queue of tickets

What We Do

A registered Futures Commission Merchant ("FCM"​) providing brokerage clearing execution and technology services for Exchange Traded Futures and Option Contacts. We have a robust operational and technological infrastructure to leverage for market connectivity and futures trading. We offer multiple trading platforms and products and have exclusive access to the Firetip trading platform.