Software Engineer - Market Data

About Alpaca

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Among our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totaling over 10 million brokerage accounts.

Alpaca is backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

About the Role

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Market Data team, you will help build and scale the systems and services that form the foundation of Alpaca, empowering millions of users 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. You will oversee public API structures and documentation for both streaming and historical endpoints, planning, ideating, experimenting, and putting into production new services and libraries to solve complex scaling challenges.

Responsibilities

• Design highly scalable, mission-critical market data provider services.
• Maintain software quality and test coverage.
• Participate in peer code reviews.
• Troubleshoot incidents and reported bugs.

Requirements (Must-Haves)

• BSc/MSc or equivalent experience in Computer Science or a related field.
• Minimum 3 years of backend software development experience.
• Hands-on experience with Docker or Kubernetes.
• A DevOps mindset.
• Knowledge of Agile/Scrum methodologies.
• Deep understanding of POSIX-like operating systems, modern infrastructure, and orchestration practices.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience working with large datasets.
• Experience with Kubernetes (CKA or CKAD certification is a plus).
• Experience with SQL and IP networking.
• Good understanding of financial markets.
• Experience with major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Hands-on knowledge of shell scripting, Linux, and Docker.
• Knowledge of microservice architectures and clean code principles.

Our Tech & Infrastructure Stack

• Languages: Go (primary), Python
• Protocols: REST, gRPC, WebSockets, SSE
• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Services (GKE, BigTable)
• Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK

Benefits & Perks

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: USD $500 one-time setup allowance
• Monthly Brex Card Stipend: USD $150 per month