Staff Software Engineer - New Markets Japan (JLPT N1 Fluent)

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.

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, totaling over 10 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team is a diverse group of 400+ experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond! 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.

Note: Please do not apply unless you possess JLPT N1 (Fluent Japanese) proficiency.

Your Role

As a Staff Engineer, you will design, implement, and maintain the systems and services that form Alpaca's foundation and empower millions of users trading billions of dollars in assets. You will contribute to regional recruitment initiatives, drive cross-functional team projects, mentor teammates, and foster Alpaca culture in the Japan region. You will also participate in operational reliability engineering during regional business hours, ensuring proactive 24x7 platform stability.

We are seeking an experienced backend engineer who can bridge engineering work with Japan-specific regulatory, vendor, and partner requirements, with the autonomy to architect and implement solutions meeting strategic objectives.

What You Will Do

• Design highly scalable, mission-critical brokerage systems for the Japan market.
• Develop and enhance middle- and back-office systems, including gRPC microservices, REST/gRPC APIs, and vendor integrations specific to Japan (e.g., JPX, JSCC, JASDEC, banks, identity verification vendors).
• Collaborate with core teams to adapt systems for Japan-specific requirements such as NISA, MyNumber, withholding tax, and JP-GAAP accounting.
• Work with global tech leads synchronously and asynchronously via Slack and meetings.
• Coordinate in Japanese with local regulators, vendors, partners, and business stakeholders, translating requirements into technical specifications.
• Troubleshoot incidents and bugs to maintain system integrity and performance.
• Participate in on-call rotations and handle engineering projects and production issues during Japan business hours.

Requirements (Must-Haves)

• Native or JLPT N1 level fluency in Japanese (reading, writing, and professional communication with regulators, vendors, and partners).
• Business-level English fluency for collaboration in team meetings, design discussions, code reviews, and documentation.
• Proven experience designing and developing complex financial systems, preferably including double-entry accounting.
• Strong understanding of accounting principles, ledger structures, and transaction reconciliation.
• Experience building scalable, high-availability financial applications handling multi-currency transactions.
• Familiarity with regulatory compliance in financial markets (preferably Japan: FIEA, FSA, JSDA, JIPF).
• Proficiency in at least one statically typed language (e.g., Go, Rust, Java, Kotlin, C#, Scala, C++).
• Experience with financial APIs, market data integrations, and trade settlement processes.
• Strong computer science fundamentals, system architecture experience, domain-driven design, and event-driven design.
• Ability to work independently in a fully remote, globally distributed team under fast-paced conditions.
• Authority to lead and troubleshoot production incidents during Japan business hours.

Nice-To-Haves

• Proficiency in Go (Alpaca's primary backend language) or willingness to ramp up quickly.
• Experience in the Japanese financial services sector (securities firms, banks, brokerages, fintech).
• Hands-on integration experience with Japan market infrastructure (JPX, JSCC, JASDEC, major Japanese banks).
• Experience with Japan-specific products (NISA, iDeCo, tokutei-koza, MyNumber).
• Experience in a fast-growing startup or working with multi-timezone global teams.

Benefits & Perks

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500 stipend
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via Brex Card