Senior Backend Engineer, US Exchange

Polymarket•New York, NY

About The Position

Polymarket is looking for a backend engineer to help build and scale the core exchange infrastructure that powers our markets. This role is focused on high-performance, low-latency backend systems that must be correct, fast, and resilient under real-world trading load. You’ll be a core individual contributor working with other senior engineers to design, implement, and optimize the systems that sit at the heart of Polymarket’s exchange. This is a high-ownership role with minimal bureaucracy and a strong bias toward execution. We’re looking for an experienced backend engineer who enjoys working close to the metal and solving hard distributed systems problems.

Requirements

4–7+ years of professional backend development experience, with strong proficiency in C/C++ (preferred) or another systems language (Go, Rust, Java).
Solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, concurrency, memory management, and experience building low-latency, high-throughput systems.
Comfortable working on complex systems end-to-end, debugging production issues on Linux, and taking responsibility for correctness and performance.

Nice To Haves

Experience in trading systems, HFT, gaming, telecom, or other latency-sensitive domains
Production experience with Kafka, Pulsar, or similar streaming platforms at scale
Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, ZeroMQ, or similar technologies
Experience deploying systems in cloud environments (AWS/GCP) and using containers

Responsibilities

Build the exchange backend: Design and implement scalable, low-latency backend services that power Polymarket’s exchange, using C/C++ or other performance-oriented systems languages (Go, Rust, Java).
Optimize for performance & scale: Profile, tune, and debug systems with a focus on latency, throughput, memory usage, and correctness in production.
Design distributed systems: Build and operate robust APIs, data pipelines, and event-driven systems using messaging and streaming platforms (Kafka, Pulsar, RabbitMQ).
Own reliability & operations: Reinforce security, availability, performance, and scalability across backend systems, and participate in diagnosing and resolving production issues.
Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with engineers across product, infra, and data to ensure tight integration between the exchange and the broader platform.
Contribute to code quality: Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and architectural decisions to maintain a high bar for engineering excellence.