Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our

culture page

to understand what drives us and how we work.

The team

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

The Exchange team is responsible for everything to do with the trading backend services such as the matching engine, market data gateways, internal and external APIs, margin systems and various other trading services. The team is located globally and responsibilities are split into sub-teams, working with various tech stacks. Our teams code in C++, Go, Rust, and Python, depending on the product they are contributing to within Kraken and work agile around the globe. Recently, the Trading Technologies team played a critical role in

scaling Kraken's trading infrastructure.

The opportunity

• Lead and grow a team of 8-10 engineers owning core trading backend services, including the matching engine, market data gateways, and order entry systems
• Guide the team through the ongoing evolution of our trading stack, from legacy systems to their modern replacements
• Stay technically close enough to the stack to unblock, review, and contribute to architecture discussions across matching engine, market data, and order entry work with ability to jump in and assist with coding
• Champion performance and market data work as top priorities, while also supporting the team's broader technical scope
• Bring AI-assisted engineering practices into the team's workflow and help engineers adopt them
• Partner cross-functionally with product and other engineering pods to drive roadmap execution
• Represent the team technically with peer teams and stakeholders, communicating tradeoffs and progress clearly

What you bring

• Experience managing engineering teams, with a preference for managers who stay technically engaged rather than purely administrative
• Prior hands-on experience in at least one of the following using Linux: distributed and/or highly-concurrent systems; low-latency and/or high-volume transaction environments
• Proficiency in Rust and/or C++; comfort operating in a team split across C++, Rust, Go, and Python
• Demonstrated knowledge of order types, trading systems, and financial products
• Experience with Aeron or similar messaging/transport systems a strong plus
• Comfort with multicast-based market data distribution a plus
• Cryptocurrency/blockchain familiarity highly preferable
• Proactive mindset with the ability to prioritize across a technically deep team and adhere to aggressive deadlines
• BS in a technical or quantitative field

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.