Staff Engineer / Team Lead - Market Data

Who We Are:Alpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Our recent Series C funding round brought our total investment to over $170 million, fueling our ambitious vision.Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 6 million brokerage accounts.Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.Alpaca is proudly backed by top-tier global investors, including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Elefund, and Y Combinator.Our Team Members:We're a dynamic team of 230 globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond!We're searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca's rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.Your Role:As a team lead, you will help build and scale the systems and services that form the foundation of Alpaca and empower millions of users who are trading billions of dollars worth of assets.The market data team is responsible for improving the overall architecture of Alpaca connected to data products such as stocks, options, crypto, and foreign exchange markets. Oversee their public API structure and documentation on both streaming and historical endpoints. The team is responsible for building a cohesive developer-first API and is tasked with planning, ideating, experimenting, and putting into production the new services, and libraries that overcome some of our greatest technical challenges as we continue to scale rapidly.We are looking for a staff engineer level Team Lead who is keen on providing quality solutions, has proven experience building and architecting at scale, and is not afraid of challenging conventions or voicing their opinions. In this role, you will have the autonomy to design and implement solutions to achieve defined goals while actively participating in defining those goals. This demanding team also requires a deep understanding of POSIX-like operating systems, modern infrastructure, and orchestration practices.Things You Get To Do:Own end-to-end architecture for the market data suite, ensuring scalability, modularity, and maintainabilityDrive technical planning, sprint scoping, and cross-functional alignment with product teamsMentor senior and mid-level engineers, foster engineering best practicesSet and uphold standards for code quality, observability, and performanceCollaborate with leadership on roadmap priorities, and help steer product evolutionContribute to a core system that millions of end users will rely onHelp us create a global financial identity verification and risk management serviceImplement backend services and work on designing an architecture where reliability mattersTake ownership of tasks, identify and address technical challenges proactively, and propose innovative solutionsParticipate in code reviewsTroubleshoot incidents and reported bugsYou may be asked to be on-call to assist with engineering projects that are timely in natureWho You Are (Must-Haves):10 years of backend engineering experience, with 4 years in a lead roleProven ability to design and scale complex distributed systems, preferably in GoExperience with cloud platforms, preferably Google Cloud PlatformExtensive knowledge relational databases, preferably PostgreSQLFamiliarity with TCP/IP, and UDP networkingProficient with Linux/BSD, and shell scriptingExperience with managing and maintaining large and complex code basesStrong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholdersExperience managing and mentoring engineers and leading cross-functional projectsStrong problem-solving skills paired with a proactive mindsetA preference for simple and elegant solutionsExcited about what we are building at AlpacaProven track record of architecting and leading medium-scale projects involving multiple teamsExperience with Kubernetes or other workload orchestration and scheduling systems (we primarily use Kubernetes via GKE)A passion for financial marketsWho You Might Be (Nice-to-Haves): Experience in the finance industryCloud Networking experience (BGP, VPC peering)Experience with messaging queues and message brokersExperience integrating with external servicesExperience with capacity planning and benchmarkingKnowledge of eBPF Experience working remotelyExperience working at a startupDevOps mindsetHow We Take Care of You:Competitive Salary & Stock OptionsHealth BenefitsNew Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex CardAlpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.Recruitment Privacy Policy

Salary : $112,100 - $147,700