Staff Software Engineer

What you'll do:

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Staff Software Engineer to join our Trading Services team. In this pivotal role, you will help evolve our advanced trading system. As a senior engineer on the team, your work will have a profound impact on our core high-throughput, low-latency trading application, directly influencing our business's bottom line.

In this role you will:

• Design, develop, and maintain our Scala and Akka-based trading system deployed on Kubernetes in the cloud
• Architect, deploy, and manage backend services in a Kubernetes environment to ensure scalability, availability, and resilience
• Implement and enhance our services architecture for trading applications, promoting modularity and maintainability
• Develop distributed systems to support the high-performance and low-latency requirements of trading platforms
• Implement robust monitoring and logging solutions to track and analyze backend system performance in real time
• Integrate backend systems with market data feeds, ensuring accurate and timely data for trading activities
• Collaborate with other engineering teams and Product Managers to deliver end-to-end customer solutions

What you'll need:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
• 8+ years of software development experience with reactive, message-driven, distributed near real-time applications, preferably in a high-performance, low-latency environment
• 5+ years of professional experience with Scala (or similar JVM-based languages) backend software development
• Familiarity with functional programming principles
• Experience with Kubernetes and cloud services (e.g., Google Cloud Platform), with a focus on scalability and high availability
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or equivalent
• Exceptional troubleshooting, debugging, and diagnostic skills for cloud and web-based technologies using industry-standard observability tooling and frameworks
• Deep understanding of modern distributed systems and the ability to troubleshoot HTTP/HTTPS, WebSockets, TLS, DNS, TCP/IP, and similar protocols
• Dependable team player with a strong work ethic, exceptional accuracy, and analytical and problem-solving skills, with a focus on performance analysis and optimization
• Ability to take full ownership of projects (design, implement, test, deploy, maintain, and iterate), with a focus on delivering high-quality production software
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, collaborates effectively, seeks feedback, and strives for continual improvement

Compensation:

• The salary range for this role will be $160,000.00 - $200,000.00 USD. In addition, this position will also receive an annual target bonus of 12%. Bonus pay at NinjaTrader is based on individual performance (50%) as well as company/team performance (50%).
• Salary and bonus earnings are only two components of the total compensation package offered by NinjaTrader. NinjaTrader offers a 401K plan through ADP under which the company will match up to 3.5% of employee contributions. Annual paid time off allowance accrues at a rate of 23 days per year plus seven paid holidays.

Location:

This role is based in Chicago, IL. *There may be remote flexibility for exceptional candidates in the following states: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington DC, Wisconsin.

Hybrid:

For Chicago-based employees, we follow a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday, with remote work on Mondays and Fridays. In addition to these weekly remote days, we offer:

• 20 additional flex remote days annually
• 5 Company Wide Office-Optional weeks tied to major holidays