Assistant Engineer Jobs in Waterloo, ON (NOW HIRING)

Your Role:

As a Senior Engineer, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining the systems and services that form Alpaca's foundation and empower millions of users who trade billions of dollars worth of assets. You will be responsible for regional recruitment initiatives, leading cross-functional team projects, mentoring talent on our engineering principles and practices, and fostering Alpaca culture in the region. As the lead, you will also serve as the operational reliability and engineering lead and the incident commander during regional business hours, ensuring proactive 24x7 stability.

For this role, we are seeking an experienced full-stack engineer dedicated to delivering high-quality, seamless software solutions. The ideal candidate has a proven track record of designing and building scalable applications and is comfortable challenging conventions and advocating for innovative solutions. In this position, you will have the autonomy to architect and implement solutions that meet our strategic objectives while also a collaborative, cross-functional team.

• Design a highly scalable, mission-critical brokerage system.
• Develop and enhance the middle- and back-office systems, including gRPC microservices, a React-based UI for internal administration and API developers, and third-party vendor integrations.
• Work closely with Alpaca's core teams to enhance and transform the core framework, enabling support for multiple languages, currencies, and markets.
• Collaborate with tech leads in other regions both synchronously and asynchronously, using Slack and occasional meetings outside of regular working hours to align with global teams.
• Troubleshoot incidents and reported bugs to maintain system integrity and performance.
• Thrive in a global environment, effectively navigating regulatory requirements and building scalable solutions to support Alpaca's international growth.
• You may be asked to be on-call to assist with timely engineering projects.

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

• Proven experience in the financial services industry, specifically with online trading platforms, brokerage systems, or fintech companies.
• Proven experience in designing and developing complex financial systems, preferably including double-entry accounting.
• Understanding of financial transaction processing, trade lifecycle management, and settlement processes.
• Strong experience with online trading systems, including order management, execution, market data processing, and real-time trade processing.
• Experience in building scalable, high-availability financial applications that handle multi-currency transactions.
• Familiarity with regulatory compliance requirements in financial markets.
• Proficiency in Go or similar backend languages, with expertise in designing robust and efficient system architectures.
• Experience working with financial APIs, market data integrations, and trade settlement processes.
• Strong communication skills to collaborate effectively with global teams, local regulators, vendors, and internal stakeholders.
• Strong computer science fundamentals and proven software engineering architecture experience
• Ability to work independently in a fully remote, globally distributed team, and under pressure in a fast-paced environment.
• Strategic thinking and the ability to translate technical concepts into business strategies.
• Experience with domain-driven design and event-driven design.
• Strong problem-solving skills paired with a proactive mindset.
• Ability to act as incident commander and lead and troubleshoot incidents or bugs with authority.

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

• Experience working in a startup or fast-growing technology company.
• Knowledge of emerging technologies.
• Experience or passion for financial markets.
• Experience managing vendors and organizational budgeting.
• Experience working with global teams.