Senior / Staff Software Engineer

About the role

You will own the design and delivery of core order and execution infrastructure that powers Clear Street's cloud-native brokerage platform. You will translate complex regulatory requirements into robust, testable systems that ensure correctness and performance under strict market conditions. You will collaborate closely with trading, operations, and product teams to shape the architecture of a rapidly evolving ecosystem. You will build scalable services that handle billions in daily trading volume with low-latency execution and fault tolerance. You will champion engineering best practices across the full software lifecycle from design through deployment and observability. You will ensure that critical workflows such as risk controls and venue integrations remain audit-ready and reliable. You will continuously challenge existing assumptions to improve development practices and system performance.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Build and scale mission-critical order and execution management infrastructure in Rust, including order workflows, execution logic, and distributed trading services.
• Design systems that balance low-latency execution, fault tolerance, and strict correctness guarantees across distributed trading workflows.
• Shape the architecture and engineering direction of a rapidly evolving trading platform in a fast-moving, iterative environment.
• Develop efficient, audit-ready risk controls and venue-specific trading abstractions with a focus on correctness and performance.
• Translate evolving regulatory and market structure requirements (CAT, Reg NMS, MiFID) into reliable, testable platform capabilities.
• Collaborate with product managers, traders, and operations teams to define and prioritize features that improve client workflows and execution quality.
• Implement high-performance communication protocols and interfaces to integrate with clearing houses, exchanges, and liquidity venues.
• Optimize system performance and reliability through profiling, observability, and iterative refinement in production environments.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers by providing code reviews, technical design input, and best practices for distributed systems development.
• Participate in on-call rotations to support production incidents and ensure timely resolution of critical issues.
• Drive automation of testing, deployment, and monitoring to reduce manual overhead and increase platform resilience.
• Contribute to long-term technology strategy by evaluating new tools, frameworks, and patterns that enhance scalability and developer productivity.
• Work cross-functionally to align platform capabilities with business goals, compliance obligations, and client expectations.
• Maintain high standards for code quality, documentation, and operational runbooks across all services.

Requirements

• Expertise in event-driven architectures and distributed systems using technologies such as Kafka, Aeron, or similar messaging platforms.
• Strong proficiency in Rust programming language with demonstrated ability to write safe, concurrent, and high-performance systems.
• Advanced understanding of domain-driven design principles and data modeling for complex business domains.
• Experience designing and operating systems that require strict correctness and consistency guarantees under high load.
• Familiarity with capital markets workflows and order lifecycle management in buy-side EMS or sell-side OMS environments.
• Track record of translating regulatory requirements such as CAT, Reg NMS, and MiFID into reliable and testable software implementations.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment where priorities evolve based on market and business needs.
• Strong communication skills to collaborate with engineering, trading, and operations teams across distributed locations.
• Commitment to maintaining high standards of reliability, observability, and operational excellence in production systems.
• Willingness to learn and contribute across the full stack when needed to unblock critical delivery timelines.
• Demonstrated ownership and accountability for delivery outcomes across the full software lifecycle from design through production.

Nice to have

• Experience with production Rust in environments that require high throughput and low latency.
• Deep knowledge of order lifecycles and capital-markets workflows in buy-side EMS, sell-side OMS, or exchange matching engines.
• Track record of converting regulatory or compliance requirements into reliable, testable code with strong test coverage.
• Experience with high-performance messaging protocols such as IPC, multicast, and Aeron messaging systems.
• Deep knowledge of financial protocols including FIX, ITCH, and OUCH for market data and order entry.
• Experience with multiple asset classes such as options, futures, and crypto instruments and their settlement workflows.
• Familiarity with international markets, time zones, and global system design considerations for cross-border trading.
• Active contribution to open source projects or publication of technical content related to distributed systems or financial technology.
• Experience with the Active Team technology stack including Rust, Aeron, Kafka, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, gRPC, and Snowflake for analytics and reporting.

Practical notes

This role is fully remote and open to candidates located in regions where Clear Street is authorized to employ and sponsor talent. No relocation assistance or visa sponsorship is currently available for this position. Compensation details are not included in this job description and may vary based on location, experience, and internal banding. The listed base salary range is provided for reference and does not include potential bonuses or equity components.