Director of Engineering, Trading

About the role

Alpaca is expanding its institutional trading capabilities to power sophisticated trading strategies and serve demanding institutional clients. This role is crucial for building and scaling the engineering team responsible for this expansion. You will shape the future of our multi-asset trading platform.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Develop and implement the engineering strategy for Alpaca's institutional trading platform.
• Build, mentor, and grow a team of engineers focused on high-impact systems.
• Collaborate with product and brokerage leadership to align engineering efforts with business goals.
• Drive the technical evolution to support multi-asset trading, including FX and futures, with cross-margining.
• Design and deliver key institutional trading features, such as order management, real-time risk assessment, and margin calculations.
• Establish and maintain technical standards for performance, availability, and scalability in critical trading systems.
• Oversee numerous projects concurrently across trading, risk, margin, and client-facing tools.
• Work closely with Product, Risk, Compliance, Operations, and Finance teams to ensure successful product launches.
• Provide technical and architectural guidance at the executive level.
• Contribute directly to engineering tasks, including code reviews and production deployments.

Requirements

• Engineering leadership experience at a Director level or higher, with a track record of owning market-facing platforms.
• Demonstrated success in building and scaling engineering teams for complex, critical systems.
• In-depth knowledge of institutional trading and brokerage technology, including execution, risk, and margin systems.
• Experience designing or operating systems that manage cross-asset risk and margining.
• Strong architectural judgment, balancing speed, reliability, and regulatory compliance.
• Deep understanding of operating systems and distributed systems for performance-sensitive applications.
• Ability to effectively partner with senior business, brokerage, and product leaders.
• Excellent communication skills, able to convey technical concepts to diverse audiences.

Nice to have

• Experience with algorithmic trading systems across various asset classes.
• Familiarity with portfolio margin or cross-margining methodologies.
• Background supporting hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, or similar institutional clients.
• Experience contributing to industry-wide architecture standards or technical initiatives.
• Prior experience scaling trading platforms during rapid growth phases.

Skills & tools

• Experience with institutional trading systems
• Experience with brokerage platforms
• Experience with order management systems
• Experience with risk and margin engines
• Experience with multi-asset trading architectures
• Experience with distributed systems
• Experience with OS fundamentals

Practical notes

• Competitive salary and stock options.
• Health benefits.
• USD $500 one-time home office setup allowance.
• USD $150 monthly stipend via Brex Card.