Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. NinjaTrader is a retail trading platform and futures broker providing software and brokerage services for financial markets. The company is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and maintain Scala-based backend systems supporting evaluation, risk management, auto-liquidation, and trading services. The role owns complex backend initiatives, contributes to architecture and production support, and collaborates with cross-functional engineering and product teams.
Responsibilities
- Design and implement backend services in Scala for evaluation, risk, and trading service workloads, including real-time auto-liquidation, account state management, and post-trade processing
- Build and evolve actor-based systems, such as Akka or similar technologies, that handle high-throughput market data, position changes, and event-driven workflows
- Own significant features end-to-end, from technical specifications through implementation, code review, and production handoff
- Design data models and database changes in 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 loads
- Drive code quality across the team through thorough pull request reviews, clear acceptance criteria, disciplined development testing, and proper instrumentation and observability
- Collaborate with Trading Services, Solutions Engineering, and Product to translate business requirements into well-scoped, accurately estimated stories
- Contribute to architectural decisions and long-term technical debt remediation, including modernizing legacy Scala services and evaluating 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, including idiomatic Scala, functional patterns, testing with ScalaTest or similar tools, and comfort working in a large, existing Scala codebase
- Experience with actor-based concurrency models, such as Akka, Pekko, or equivalent technologies, including an understanding of supervision, message passing, and backpressure
- Solid relational database skills with PostgreSQL, including schema design, indexing, query optimization, and sound judgment about when to use JSONB versus a normalized structure
- Comfort with event-driven architectures, message buses such as Kafka or Pub/Sub, and asynchronous workflows
- Excellent troubleshooting skills, with the ability to read logs, trace requests across distributed systems, and isolate root causes under pressure
- Demonstrated ability to write clear technical specifications, scope work realistically, and identify risks early
- High standards for code, tests, documentation, and pull requests, along with a willingness to uphold those standards during code reviews
- 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 explain backend tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences
- Self-starter who thrives in ambiguity and can manage multiple complex backend initiatives simultaneously
- Experience with trading platforms, fintech, or capital markets technology
- Understanding of trading concepts, including order routing, market data, position management, risk and liquidation logic, and profit and loss calculations
- Familiarity with Protobuf, gRPC, or schema-based service contracts
- Experience migrating or modernizing legacy Scala systems or evaluating transitions from Scala to Rust or Go
- Background in observability, including distributed tracing, structured logging, and metrics using Datadog, Google Cloud Platform, or similar technologies
- Prior experience supporting enterprise or business-to-business partner integrations
Benefits
- Annual target bonus of 12%
- 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
- Remote flexibility for exceptional candidates in the following states: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington DC, Wisconsin
- For Chicago-based employees, a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday, with remote work on Mondays and Fridays
- 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
Company Overview
Company H1B Sponsorship