Software Engineer - Pre-trade analytics, risk, portfolio optimization

Clear Street•New York, NY

4d•$170,000 - $220,000•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will play a foundational role in building our Alpha Platform — a modern, AI-driven system for pre-trade analytics, risk, hedging, portfolio optimization, and customized client exposure management. You'll join a team of passionate, collaborative engineers tackling non-trivial problems that demand careful trade-off analysis, clean system design, and efficient implementation. You will work across the full stack, from data ingestion and processing pipelines to AI-driven analytics and client-facing API layers, on a high-SLA financial platform built to the highest engineering standards. You will help evolve our technical standards and best practices, and promote a culture of excellence.

Requirements

At least five (5) years of professional experience implementing highly scalable services in Java (with deep fluency in the Spring Framework ecosystem) and/or Python (with deep fluency in FastAPI, Pydantic, and async patterns), including experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL and data processing libraries such as Pandas or Polars. Proficiency in one is required; experience in both is a strong plus.
Fluent in AI-assisted development workflows, leveraging tools such as Claude Code to accelerate delivery, and comfortable with Spec-Driven Development (SDD).
Strong command of design patterns, data structures, and algorithms.
Readiness to learn.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with our platform stack — gRPC, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, Gradle, uv, AWS, and Kubernetes.
Comfortable working in, or learning, domains such as financial risk or pre-trade analytics.
Exposure to finance with an understanding of instruments and concepts such as swaps, custom baskets, the trade lifecycle, performance calculations and attribution, and factor models.

Responsibilities

Play a foundational role in building our Alpha Platform — a modern, AI-driven system for pre-trade analytics, risk, hedging, portfolio optimization, and customized client exposure management.
Work across the full stack, from data ingestion and processing pipelines to AI-driven analytics and client-facing API layers, on a high-SLA financial platform built to the highest engineering standards.
Help evolve our technical standards and best practices, and promote a culture of excellence.
Mentor team members, define engineering standards, and drive a system design approach to building new services.
Take end-to-end ownership of problems, independently defining the approach, navigating trade-offs, and driving solutions from initial design and coding through production delivery.
Clearly articulate the nuances of system design and architectural paradigms to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
Prioritize end-user experience, ensuring it is reflected in API design, functionality, and performance.