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Alpaca is a US-headquartered global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries. The company provides institutional-grade APIs for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, and 24/5 trading, supporting over 10 million brokerage accounts. Backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier investors including Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, and Y Combinator, Alpaca operates a globally distributed team of 400+ engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals.
You will join as a Staff Fullstack Engineer leading the technical direction of the Trading API team. This team owns the complete customer experience: how customers access the platform, account structure and security, and the applications they use to trade. The work spans the full stack—customer-facing trading applications, identity and account systems, permissions infrastructure, and integrations for partner apps and AI agents.
This is a high-trust domain where systems control who can act on an account and what they're permitted to do. A defect can expose customer data, grant unauthorized access, or lock customers out during critical trading moments. You will architect and own systems handling identity and authorization, account models, and trading applications with the same rigor applied to both backend services and customer-facing interfaces.
You will not manage people directly but will lead through architecture, code reviews, design reviews, and mentorship as a principal contributor. You'll be the senior technical anchor for the team, partnering with the engineering manager, Product, Design, and adjacent teams (trading, margin, risk, platform).
Key responsibilities include: owning the architecture and technical roadmap for customer access to Trading API (identity, authentication, authorization, account models, OAuth, applications); designing access models for complex account structures (multiple users, sub-accounts, entity accounts, delegated API and agent access); leading technical delivery of next-generation customer applications (real-time market data, order entry, positions and order views); driving migration from legacy monolith endpoints to a dedicated application backend with clear API contracts; setting the security bar for customer-facing systems (session handling, MFA, passkeys, OAuth, rate limiting, input validation); establishing standards for safe delivery (feature flags, staged rollouts, testing, observability); partnering across Product, Design, Compliance, Security, and Operations; leading design reviews and mentoring engineers; and serving as technical escalation for production issues.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of software engineering experience with significant time on both backend services and customer-facing applications; scope and ownership matter more than strict year count
- Proven ownership of production systems where defects could expose customer data, grant wrong access, or cause financial loss
- Deep experience with authentication and authorization: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, session and token management, MFA, role- or attribute-based permission models
- Strong backend expertise in Go, or deep experience in Java, Kotlin, C#, or Rust with clear willingness to work primarily in Go
- Strong frontend experience with TypeScript and React, including complex state-heavy applications; real-time data over WebSockets or streaming protocols strongly preferred
- Solid knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred), API design (REST and gRPC), and service-oriented systems on Kubernetes
- Demonstrated care for correctness and security: threat modeling, testing strategy, edge-case analysis, safe production rollout
- Clear communication with engineers, designers, product managers, compliance and security partners
- Track record of technical leadership and mentorship; product-minded approach
PREFERRED SKILLS:
- Experience building trading, brokerage, or financial applications (order entry, positions/P&L, charting, real-time market data)
- Experience with identity platforms (Cognito, Keycloak, Auth0), passkeys, WebAuthn, or delegated access
- Experience with API platforms and developer products (API keys, scopes, rate limits, SDKs, dashboards)
- Experience with agentic AI integrations (MCP servers, AI agent tooling)
- Familiarity with FIX or institutional trading workflows
- Experience leading monolith migrations in production-critical environments
