Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. NinjaTrader is a retail trading platform and futures broker that provides trading software and brokerage services. The company is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and maintain Scala-based backend systems for evaluation, risk, auto-liquidation, and trading services. The role owns complex backend features end-to-end and collaborates across engineering, product, QA, and solutions teams.
Responsibilities
- Design and implement backend services in Scala for evaluation, risk, and trading services workloads—including real-time auto-liquidation, account state management, and post-trade processing
- Build and evolve actor-based systems (Akka or similar) that handle high-throughput market data, position changes, and event-driven workflows
- Own significant features end-to-end: from technical spec through implementation, code review, and production hand-off
- Design data models and database changes (PostgreSQL, including JSONB where appropriate), and contribute to the shared master schema, Protobuf, and SQL repositories
- Diagnose and resolve complex backend issues—including production incidents—by analyzing logs, tracing distributed flows, and reproducing edge cases under realistic load
- Drive code quality across the team: thorough PR reviews, clear acceptance criteria, dev-testing discipline, and proper instrumentation and observability
- Collaborate with Trading Services, Solutions Engineering, and Product to translate business requirements into well-scoped, well-estimated stories
- Contribute to architectural decisions and long-term tech-debt remediation, including modernization of legacy Scala services and evaluation of new event-bus technologies
- Mentor junior team members on Scala idioms, functional design, testing practices, and incident response
- Develop deep expertise in NinjaTrader's evaluation platform and partner integrations to provide authoritative backend leadership
Skills
- 5+ years of backend software engineering experience building production systems that handle real-time data, concurrency, and high availability
- Strong, hands-on Scala expertise—idiomatic Scala, functional patterns, testing (ScalaTest or similar), and comfort working in a large existing Scala codebase
- Experience with actor-based concurrency models (Akka, Pekko, or equivalent)—understanding of supervision, message passing, and back-pressure
- Solid relational database skills with PostgreSQL—schema design, indexing, query optimization, and judgment on when JSONB is appropriate vs. when a normalized structure is correct
- Comfort with event-driven architectures, message buses (Kafka, Pub/Sub, or similar), and asynchronous workflows
- Excellent troubleshooting skills with the ability to read logs, trace requests across distributed systems, and isolate root cause under pressure
- Demonstrated ability to write clear technical specs, scope work realistically, and flag risk early
- High-quality standards for code, tests, documentation, and PRs—and willingness to enforce the same standards in code review
- Ability to think on your feet and adapt quickly when priorities shift or unexpected issues arise
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate backend tradeoffs for both technical and non-technical audiences
- Self-starter who thrives in ambiguity and can manage multiple complex backend efforts simultaneously
- Experience with trading platforms, fintech, or capital markets technology
- Understanding of trading concepts: order routing, market data, position management, risk and liquidation logic, and P&L calculation
- Familiarity with Protobuf, gRPC, or schema-based service contracts
- Experience migrating or modernizing legacy Scala systems or evaluating Scala → Rust/Go transitions
- Background in observability: distributed tracing, structured logging, and metrics (Datadog, GCP, or similar)
- Prior experience supporting enterprise or B2B partner integrations
Benefits
- Annual target bonus of 10%
- 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 18 days per year (some positions may qualify for more)
- Seven paid holidays
- 20 additional flex remote days annually
- 5 Company Wide Office-Optional weeks tied to major holidays
- Generous PTO
- 7 Paid Holidays Annually + 5 Conditional Holidays Annually
- 1 Service Day Annually
- 401k with 3.5% Company Match
- Paid Parental Bonding Leave
- Health, Vision, Dental Coverage
- Life and Disability Insurance Covered 100% by NinjaTrader
- For Chicago-based employees, we follow a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday, with remote work on Mondays and Fridays.
- Professional development
- Employee recognition initiatives
Company Overview
Company H1B Sponsorship