Staff Software Engineer - New Markets Japan (JLPT N1 Fluent)

Alpaca•Ottawa, ON

6d•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 Series D funding, Alpaca serves hundreds of financial institutions in 40 countries through its institutional-grade APIs. The company has a diverse, globally distributed team of over 380 members working to democratize financial services. Alpaca is backed by prominent investors and is committed to open-source contributions and community building. The company values curiosity, empathy, and accountability, and is seeking passionate individuals to contribute to its rapid growth.

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 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 to ensure 24x7 platform stability.
Designing and building scalable applications.
Challenging conventions and advocating for innovative solutions.
Bridging engineering work with Japan-specific regulatory, vendor, and partner requirements.
Architecting and implementing solutions that meet strategic objectives.
Actively contributing to the goal-setting process.
Design highly scalable, mission-critical brokerage systems for the Japan market.
Develop and enhance middle- and back-office systems, including gRPC microservices, REST and gRPC APIs, and third-party vendor integrations specific to the Japan market.
Work 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.
Collaborate with tech leads in other regions both synchronously and asynchronously.
Coordinate in Japanese with local regulators, vendors, partners, and business stakeholders, and translate those requirements into technical specifications for the global engineering team.
Troubleshoot incidents and reported bugs to maintain system integrity and performance.
Participate in on-call rotations and assist with timely engineering projects and production issues during Japan business hours.
Thrive in a global environment, effectively navigating regulatory requirements and building scalable solutions to support Alpaca's expansion in Japan.