Senior Software Engineer

About the role

This role focuses on the full lifecycle of trading infrastructure. You will own complex systems from initial intake through final deployment and partner integration. The work is essential to broker dealer operations and supports both user facing and internal systems.

Key facts

What you'll do

Architect resilient data pipelines that power clearing workflows across equities, options, and fixed income.

Design secure settlement logic while integrating new partners and enabling fully paid securities lending initiatives.

Refactor legacy modules to reduce risk in self clearing US equities and US options environments.

Automate validation checks that protect institutional accounts during high volume market events.

Collaborate with trading and compliance teams to ship features that meet strict regulatory standards.

Evaluate emerging infrastructure patterns that support 24/7 trading across global markets.

Champion observability practices that keep critical systems in tip top operational condition.

Lead code reviews that uphold quality, accountability, and clarity for cross functional partners.

Requirements

You understand end to end trade lifecycle processing for broker dealer operations.

You have hands on experience with securities settlement and clearing system design.

You can communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to both engineers and finance professionals.

You have shipped reliable systems at scale under tight regulatory scrutiny.

Nice to have

Experience contributing to open source projects that serve financial institutions.

Skills & tools

Only systems and tools referenced in source documentation.

Practical notes

Who We Are

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Through our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries, including broker dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totaling over 10 million brokerage accounts. Our global team comprises experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals dedicated to opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We are 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 $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors, including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social use, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members

We are a dynamic team of 400+ 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 are 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 Senior Software Engineer on the Clearing team, you will work on what happens after the trade is made. Much of the work is not user facing, although we have some user facing systems, but it is essential to the day to day operations of a broker dealer company. During the past few years, we have become self clearing in US equities, US options, and this is the team at the heart of those achievements. We are not stopping there: there are always new integrations to build and new product offerings to enable through those integrations. Beyond core clearing, we also work on securities finance related functions and building the infrastructure that allows us to launch new product offerings, such as Fully Paid Securities Lending. There may also be additional exciting initiatives currently in development.

Things You Get To Do

• Work in a team where we value quality of thinking, excellence in execution, practical solutions, and willingness to take responsibility, instead of tenure, hierarchy, or arguing about theoretical benefits of things that do not matter.
• Own projects from ideation to deployment, cutting through ambiguity to build what is necessary, not just what is asked for.
• Design and build new systems that let us enable new products for the company or unlock more revenue.
• Refine our existing systems. They are not perfect and will never be, but we believe in improving them as long as the outcome is meaningful and tangible.
• Learn about things you never knew existed but are instrumental in keeping the financial markets healthy and functioning.
• Learn what it takes to build a company like Alpaca, see behind the curtains, and cooperate with great people from other teams. You also get to influence what we do and how we do it.
• Participate in our on-call rotation to ensure our systems are in tip top condition. We value your free time as much as you do, so we prioritize eliminating issues that cause friction for the team.