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AlpacaAL

Staff Software Engineer

Alpaca builds financial services APIs for everyone globally.

Alpaca

Employee count: 201-500

AF, AL + 146 more

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Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Our recent Series D funding round brought our total investment to over $320 million, fueling our ambitious vision.

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, totalling over 9 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're 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 top-tier global investors, including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:

We're a dynamic team of 230+ 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're 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:

We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to lead API design, governance, and application-layer architecture across Alpaca.

This role acts as the technical owner of Alpaca’s APIs—both internal and external—ensuring they are consistent, reliable, secure, and easy to evolve. You will define standards, guide architectural decisions, and own critical orchestration and aggregation services that power Alpaca’s applications.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role with a strong architectural focus. While you won’t be writing every line of code, you will contribute to shared frameworks, review designs, and own key application-level services.

Things You Get To Do:

  • Drive Alpaca’s API design principles and governance across internal and external APIs.

  • Lead application-layer architecture, including orchestration and aggregation services.

  • Own and evolve critical services powering application experiences (e.g., portfolio history, account views).

  • Define standards for API versioning, security, backward compatibility, and documentation.

  • Drive best practices for observability, performance, and reliability at the application layer.

  • Partner with platform engineering on service templates and shared infrastructure.

  • Review API and architectural designs across teams and guide complex technical decisions.

  • Contribute to shared frameworks, libraries, and tooling.

  • Mentor senior engineers and raise the bar for backend and API craftsmanship.

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

  • 8+ years of backend engineering experience, including Staff-level technical leadership.

  • Strong expertise in API design and distributed systems.

  • Proficiency in Golang or Java (or equivalent backend experience).

  • Experience with service orchestration, aggregation patterns, and BFF architectures.

  • Deep understanding of observability and operational excellence.

  • Experience in defining and influencing engineering standards across teams.

  • Strong architectural judgment and ability to balance long-term design with delivery.

  • Excellent communication skills and a collaborative mindset.

  • Familiarity with frontend systems (React/TypeScript) and API consumption patterns.

  • Algo trading experience (either professional or personal).

Who You Might Be (Nice-to-Haves):

  • Experience or understanding of financial markets.

  • Experience working at a startup.

  • Experience working remotely.

How We Take Care of You:

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

Alpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.

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Job type

Full Time

Experience level

Experience

8 years minimum

Location requirements

Hiring timezones

EMEA +/- 0 hours

About Alpaca

Learn more about Alpaca and their company culture.

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Alpaca builds financial services APIs for everyone globally. We bridge the gap between those who can access financial services and those who cannot, through inclusive technology.

We're a melting pot of diverse backgrounds from tech startup aficionados to individuals with deep financial experience. No matter your background or where you're from, we've got a role for you.

Build and scale your career

We're a team of ambitiously creative minds, set on delivering high quality and high impact results. We're always exploring and never satisfied with just enough. When problems get tough, we get energized and become even more laser-focused. We're keen on that last 10% of effort and believe that the details do matter. If this sounds like you, then you're in the right place.

Our teams are scaling and growing faster every day. If you're looking to challenge yourself and advance your career, Alpaca offers limitless opportunities. Are you ready to build with us?

Unwavering, goal-oriented culture

Our teams are goal-oriented. We care about doing the work and solving the problem together. We welcome questions from all levels because we know that no one knows all the answers. Your goal isn't to be the smartest in the room. Your goal is to help solve problems no one has solved before by driving impact in areas you're strongest. And with a positive mindset, we set out to own the unknown and thrive in situations where we have to learn to succeed.

Our goal together is to make sure that the right questions are heard no matter who they come from, and the right solutions are built no matter who builds them.

Global mindset, globally distributed

We are living in unprecedented times - our global economy is tightly interwoven while constantly expanding and transforming. The future of financial innovation will never belong to just one country. As we work to provide access to financial services for everyone on the planet, it's important for us to build a global team of agile talent with vibrantly diverse cultural experiences.

Our teams are not just global, we're also 100% remote and have team members in almost every time zone and continent (except Antarctica). By joining Alpaca you'll be part of a multicultural, international organization.

Radical, honest, and empathy-driven

We're a startup with products that are disrupting an old industry. We see the opportunity and it's clear to us that our impact is going to be massive. We want to be a team that's ready for the ups and downs. We move fast and try our best to bring honesty and clarity when we communicate. Each of us brings to the table unique life experiences and diverse backgrounds - these experiences are valued and we don't take it for granted. We want to learn about you and want you to learn about us, working together to build empathy every step of the way.

In order for us to achieve our goal of providing access to financial services for everyone on the planet, it is critical for us to maintain high-trust partnerships and act with honesty and empathy. During this journey together, we'll be learning about the world together, through our relationships with each other. This is just the beginning and we would love to work with you!

Employee benefits

Learn about the employee benefits and perks provided at Alpaca.

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Monthly Brex Card Stipend

Employees receive a monthly USD $150 stipend on a Brex card for additional work-related expenses.

Competitive Salary & Equity

Alpaca offers competitive salaries alongside stock options, ensuring employees share in the company's success.

Home-Office Setup Stipend

Alpaca provides a one-time USD $500 for home-office setup to create a comfortable and productive work environment.

Immediate Health Benefits

Health benefits at Alpaca start on day 1, covering medical, dental, and vision. In Canada, supplemental health care is included, and internationally, a stipend is provided to offset medical costs.

View Alpaca's employee benefits
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