Job Summary:
NinjaTrader is an industry-leading trading platform and futures broker on a mission to empower traders. In the role of Principal Software Engineer, you will design and optimize core trading infrastructure, ensuring high performance and scalability to support rapid growth in the retail futures trading space.
Responsibilities:
• Design, develop, and optimize our Scala-based trading services for high-volume, low-latency, 24x7 environments
• Lead architectural strategy for future-state scalability and performance optimization
• Mentor and guide junior engineers, promoting best practices and technical excellence
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, engineering, operations, and security teams to translate business requirements into robust and secure technical solutions
• Optimize system performance, with focus on JVM tuning for Scala/Akka-based distributed system
• Enhance monitoring and observability of services for real-time trade execution and operational transparency
• Ensure compliance with security policies, regulatory standards, and industry best practices
Qualifications:
Required:
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field (or equivalent experience)
• Extensive experience with high-performance, high-concurrency distributed trading systems
• Proven expertise in JVM and performance tuning for high-performance environments
• Experience supporting 24/7 production systems, ideally in trading environments
• Deep knowledge of networking and protocols (HTTP/HTTPS, WebSockets, DNS, TCP/IP)
• Experience with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitHub Actions)
• Strong troubleshooting and debugging skills in high-pressure, real-time conditions
• Excellent communication skills, capable of clearly articulating technical concepts to diverse stakeholders
• Experience in Java/Scala/Rust/C++ or functional programming languages within exchange/trading environments
Preferred:
• Experience in low-latency, lock-free development and design
• Strong experience with multithreading and concurrency in high-performance environments
• Familiarity with binary or custom trading protocols
• Strong knowledge of messaging frameworks (Kafka, RabbitMQ) and network protocols (UDP, TCP)
• Hands-on experience implementing HTTP/WebSockets, REST APIs, OAuth, gRPC, and Redis APIs
• Deep understanding of order handling/matching engines
• Extensive experience with FIX or other market data/order-entry protocols
• Practical hands-on experience with cloud-native technologies (Kubernetes and Docker)
• Solid grasp of network communications, particularly IP multicast and TCP protocols used in market data feeds
Company:
NinjaTrader provides trading software and brokerage services for futures, forex, and equities markets. Founded in 2003, the company is headquartered in Chicago, USA, with a team of 201-500 employees. The company is currently Growth Stage.