Senior Software Engineer - NewMarkets Japan

Alpaca•Ottawa, ON

1d•Remote

About The Position

Alpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure provider for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, and more. With significant recent funding, Alpaca serves hundreds of financial institutions globally through its institutional-grade APIs, supporting over 9 million brokerage accounts. The company boasts a diverse, global team of over 230 members working remotely and is committed to its mission of opening financial services to everyone. Alpaca values its team members who align with its core values: Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable. As a Senior Engineer, you will be instrumental in designing, implementing, and maintaining the core systems and services that power Alpaca. This role involves contributing to regional recruitment, driving cross-functional projects, mentoring teammates, and fostering Alpaca's culture in Japan. You will also participate in operational reliability engineering during Japan business hours to ensure 24x7 platform stability. We are seeking an experienced backend engineer dedicated to delivering high-quality software solutions, with a proven ability to design scalable applications, challenge conventions, and bridge engineering work with Japan-specific regulatory, vendor, and partner requirements. This position offers autonomy in architecting solutions and actively contributing to goal-setting within a collaborative team.

Requirements

Native or JLPT N1 level fluency in Japanese, with the ability to read, write, and communicate professionally with local regulators, vendors, and partners.
Business-level English fluency, with the ability to collaborate effectively in English-only team meetings, design discussions, code reviews, and written documentation.
Proven experience in designing and developing complex financial systems, preferably including double-entry accounting.
Strong understanding of accounting principles, ledger structures, and transaction reconciliation.
Experience in building scalable, high-availability financial applications that handle multi-currency transactions.
Familiarity with regulatory compliance requirements in financial markets, with a preference for experience in Japan (FIEA, FSA, JSDA, JIPF, or related frameworks).
Proficiency in at least one statically typed language (e.g. Go, Rust, Java, Kotlin, C#, Scala, or C++), with expertise in designing robust and efficient system architectures.
Experience working with financial APIs, market data integrations, and trade settlement processes.
Strong communication skills to collaborate effectively with global teams, local regulators, vendors, and internal stakeholders, bridging Japanese and English contexts.
Strong computer science fundamentals and proven software engineering architecture experience.
Ability to work independently in a fully remote, globally distributed team, and under pressure in a fast-paced environment.
Strategic thinking and the ability to translate technical concepts into business strategies.
Experience with domain-driven design and event-driven design.
Strong problem-solving skills paired with a proactive mindset.
Ability to lead and troubleshoot incidents or bugs with authority during Japan business hours.

Nice To Haves

Proficiency in Go, or willingness to ramp up quickly — Go is Alpaca's primary backend language.
Experience in the Japanese financial services sector (securities firms, banks, brokerages, or fintech).
Hands-on experience integrating with Japan market infrastructure such as JPX (TSE/OSE), JSCC, JASDEC, or major Japanese banks.
Experience with Japan-specific products such as NISA, iDeCo, tokutei-koza, or MyNumber handling.
Experience working in a startup or fast-growing technology company.
Knowledge of emerging technologies.
Experience or passion for financial markets.
Experience managing vendors and organizational budgeting.
Experience working with global, English-speaking teams across multiple time zones.

Responsibilities

Designing, implementing, and maintaining the systems and services that form Alpaca's foundation.
Contributing to regional recruitment initiatives.
Driving cross-functional team projects.
Mentoring teammates with respect to engineering principles and practices.
Fostering Alpaca culture in the Japan region.
Participating in operational reliability engineering during regional business hours.
Ensuring proactive 24x7 stability of our platform.
Designing highly scalable, mission-critical brokerage systems for the Japan market.
Developing and enhancing middle- and back-office systems, including gRPC microservices, REST and gRPC APIs, and third-party vendor integrations specific to the Japan market.
Working closely with Alpaca's core teams to enhance and transform the core framework, enabling support for multiple languages, currencies, and markets, with a particular focus on Japan-specific requirements.
Collaborating with tech leads in other regions both synchronously and asynchronously.
Coordinating in Japanese with local regulators, vendors, partners, and business stakeholders, and translating those requirements into technical specifications for the global engineering team.
Troubleshooting incidents and reported bugs to maintain system integrity and performance.
Participating in on-call rotations and assisting with timely engineering projects and production issues during Japan business hours.
Thriving in a global environment, effectively navigating regulatory requirements and building scalable solutions to support Alpaca's expansion in Japan.