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Role Description

We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to lead API design, governance, and application-layer architecture across Alpaca. This role acts as the technical owner of Alpaca’s APIs—both internal and external—ensuring they are consistent, reliable, secure, and easy to evolve. You will define standards, guide architectural decisions, and own critical orchestration and aggregation services that power Alpaca’s applications. This is a hands-on technical leadership role with a strong architectural focus. While you won’t be writing every line of code, you will contribute to shared frameworks, review designs, and own key application-level services.

• Drive Alpaca’s API design principles and governance across internal and external APIs.
• Lead application-layer architecture, including orchestration and aggregation services.
• Own and evolve critical services powering application experiences (e.g., portfolio history, account views).
• Define standards for API versioning, security, backward compatibility, and documentation.
• Drive best practices for observability, performance, and reliability at the application layer.
• Partner with platform engineering on service templates and shared infrastructure.
• Review API and architectural designs across teams and guide complex technical decisions.
• Contribute to shared frameworks, libraries, and tooling.
• Mentor senior engineers and raise the bar for backend and API craftsmanship.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience, including Staff-level technical leadership.
• Strong expertise in API design and distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Golang or Java (or equivalent backend experience).
• Experience with service orchestration, aggregation patterns, and BFF architectures.
• Deep understanding of observability and operational excellence.
• Experience in defining and influencing engineering standards across teams.
• Strong architectural judgment and ability to balance long-term design with delivery.
• Excellent communication skills and a collaborative mindset.
• Familiarity with frontend systems (React/TypeScript) and API consumption patterns.
• Algo trading experience (either professional or personal).

Requirements

• Experience or understanding of financial markets.
• Experience working at a startup.
• Experience working remotely.

Benefits

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card