Software Engineer, Backend Systems – Crypto Trading - Rust

About the Role

The Software Engineer, Backend Systems role focuses on building and maintaining the backend infrastructure for a real-time crypto trading platform. Candidates will work with Rust to develop high-performance systems that handle live market data and ensure low-latency responses.

What You’ll Do

• Build and maintain risk and liquidation engines that manage risk and improve capital efficiency in volatile markets.
• Design and implement blockchain state machines supporting trading, settlement, and risk operations.
• Develop services that maintain consistent state across asynchronous processes using voting, consensus, and coordination mechanisms.
• Process live market data and coordinate time-sensitive actions across trading venues.
• Manage WebSocket streams and other real-time workflows.
• Build high-performance REST and WebSocket APIs with millisecond-level response times.

Required Qualifications

• 2–4 years of relevant backend software engineering experience.
• Meaningful, hands-on production experience with Rust.
• Experience with asynchronous programming, including Tokio or directly comparable Rust-based asynchronous systems.
• Experience building backend services for real-time, high-throughput systems.
• Experience with low-latency or trading systems.
• Proficiency with multiple database types, including relational, time-series, or key-value databases.
• Meaningful experience working in a startup environment.
• Experience in fintech, crypto, trading, high-frequency trading, or blockchain.
• Genuine, demonstrable interest in trading and financial markets.
• Meaningful personal side projects, especially in Rust or C.
• Strong backend and systems-engineering fundamentals.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-moving, highly collaborative, in-person environment.
• Willingness to work from the San Francisco office 5 days per week.
• Authorization to work in the United States without current or future visa sponsorship.

What Strong Candidates Will Demonstrate

• The ability to explain what they personally built using Rust and how the system operated in production.
• A strong understanding of asynchronous and concurrent systems.
• Experience processing live data streams and other time-sensitive workflows.
• Knowledge of distributed systems and the challenges of maintaining consistent state across asynchronous processes.
• Experience building REST and WebSocket APIs.
• Experience identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks.
• Personal Rust or C projects that demonstrate curiosity and technical depth.
• A sincere interest in trading, financial markets, and web3.
• Motivation to solve difficult engineering problems within a small startup rather than work within a large, highly structured organization.

Technical Environment

The technical environment includes:

• Rust
• Tokio
• Distributed systems
• Blockchain
• REST APIs
• WebSocket APIs
• Docker
• Asynchronous programming
• Low-latency systems
• Real-time data
• High-throughput backend infrastructure
• Relational databases
• Time-series databases
• Key-value databases

Production Rust is a core requirement. General backend experience or work in another systems language does not replace the required Rust experience.

Work Environment

This is a high-bandwidth, collaborative, in-person engineering environment. The company is looking for engineers who are hungry to improve, motivated by difficult technical problems, and comfortable working at startup speed. The role requires 5 days per week in either the San Francisco office. Team members frequently choose to work together on weekends, although weekend work is not stated as mandatory.