Head of Technical Operations & Architecture

Location: Frisco, TX (Hybrid, 3 days On-Site)

Reports To: CEO/Founder

Compensation: $110,000 - $125,000 Base Salary Equity Grant Benefits

About Stack Trading

Stack Trading is an early-stage fintech company building a Direct Market Access (DMA) ecosystem. We are disrupting the high-volume proprietary trading industry by replacing the current simulation-only model with a regulatory-compliant career path for professional traders. We have architected a Decoupled Execution Topology that separates our business logic (Node.js/AWS) from our market risk logic (Execution Cores). With capital secured and the legal structure in place, we are hiring the technical lead to own the infrastructure.

The Role: Systems Architect & Engineering Lead

You are joining as the primary technical stakeholder. While we utilize external partners for the initial codebase development, you are the Architect who owns the master plan, validates the engineering standards, and holds the keys to the infrastructure.

Your mandate is twofold:

1. Manage the Build: Oversee the external Systems Integrator to ensure the Node.js middleware, API wrappers and automations are built to our specifications.
2. Own the Evolution: Once the system is live, you take full ownership of the platform, optimizing the architecture for scale and leading the transition toward internalizing our engineering capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

1. Architecture & Agency Oversight

• Serve as the primary technical counterpart to our external Systems Integrator. You will review and approve OpenAPI (Swagger) specifications and schema designs before implementation.
• Enforce the architectural separation between the Administrative State (Node.js/Postgres) and the Execution Risk State (Rithmic/TT) to ensure system resilience.
• Audit Deployment Standards: Audit the code delivery pipelines (CI/CD). Ensure the agency is using proper version control (Git) and automated deployment methods, not manual updates.
• Own User Acceptance Testing (UAT): You are responsible for validating the system against edge cases. You will simulate failures (Example: Rithmic disconnects, latency spikes) to ensure the agency’s code recovers gracefully before we go live.

2. Platform Infrastructure & Cloud Operations

• Manage the AWS environment. You own the root credentials and configuration for EC2, RDS, S3, and AWS Global Accelerator.
• Security & Hardening: Implement best practices for DDOS mitigation (AWS WAF), IP whitelisting, and secure management of API keys/secrets.
• Maintain the Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL) database. You are responsible for data integrity. You must be comfortable writing SQL queries to investigate user states, reconcile transaction logs, and generate ad-hoc reports.
• Monitor system health via CloudWatch, tracking API latency, error rates, and database performance.

3. Integration & Automation Systems

• Manage the automation bus (Zapier Enterprise). You will oversee the complex logic flows that trigger user provisioning, contract generation (DocuSign), and payroll updates (Rippling).
• Troubleshoot integration failures. When a webhook fails or data desyncs between Stripe and the database, you are the investigator who identifies the root cause in the JSON payload or server logs.
• Manage API credentials and connectivity for our institutional execution partners: Trading Technologies, Rithmic, CQG, and MetaTrader 5.

4. Incident Response & Uptime

• Monitor system health via AWS CloudWatch (Latency, Error Rates, CPU usage).
• Operational Resilience: Markets operate 23/5. You must be willing to act as the escalation point for critical infrastructure outages during active market sessions.
• Act as the lead investigator for outages, diagnosing if the issue is a database lock, a code deployment error, or a vendor failure.

5. Strategic Platform Evolution

• Partner with the founder on the technical roadmap from our current Year 1 architecture (Node.js/Zapier) toward our Year 2 goals of High-Performance Compute (HPC) and internalized engineering.
• Identify bottlenecks in the initial build and architect solutions for higher throughput as our user base scales to 5,000 traders.

Profile:

• No Black Boxes: You demand to know how the system works under the hood. You are not satisfied until you understand the data flow from the frontend button click to the database write.
• Vendor Manager: You are comfortable holding external engineering teams accountable to standards and timelines.
• Ownership Mindset: You are looking for a role where you are the ultimate owner of the technology stack, with equity upside for the risks associated with an early-stage launch.

Required Systems & Architecture Experience:

• 5 Years Experience: Background in Systems Engineering or Technical Architecture. You have managed complex software ecosystems where multiple third-party services interact.
• API Proficiency: Strong understanding of REST, WebSocket, and Webhook architectures. You can read API documentation to understand authentication methods, rate limits, and payload structures.
• Cloud Infrastructure (AWS): Hands-on experience managing production environments on AWS. You must be comfortable managing EC2 (Compute), RDS (PostgreSQL Database), S3 (Secure Storage), and CloudWatch (Monitoring & Logs).
• Database Fluency: Intermediate SQL skills. You can write queries to investigate user states and reconcile transaction logs without needing a developer to assist you.

Technical Familiarity (Preferred):

• Security Best Practices: Familiarity with WAF, IP whitelisting, and managing API secrets in a production environment.
• Familiarity with Node.js application structures (middleware, express).
• Experience utilizing No-Code/Low-Code automation tools (Zapier, Make) in an enterprise context.

Please note: No visa sponsorship is available for this position. Candidates must be U.S. Citizens or Lawful Permanent Residents (Green Card holders).