Responsibilities

Collaborate closely with Product, DevOps, SRE, and Security teams to ensure Kraken's platform is reliable, secure, and scalable
Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, influencing best practices in system design, testing, and performance optimization
Take ownership of system-wide architectural initiatives and shape long-term technical strategy
Contribute to the team’s incident response, root cause analysis, and system hardening efforts
Champion continuous improvement by introducing new tools, techniques, and technologies that raise the bar for backend engineering

Requirements

10+ years of experience designing and implementing high-performance backend systems, preferably in finance, trading, or distributed environments
Deep expertise in at least one systems language (C++, Go, or Rust) and solid scripting knowledge in Python
Strong familiarity with Linux systems, including low-level debugging, concurrency, and profiling
Experience building and optimizing low-latency, high-throughput services handling large-scale transaction volumes
Demonstrated ability to make data-driven architectural decisions and communicate trade-offs clearly
Experience with distributed systems, messaging queues, and inter-service communication protocols (gRPC, REST, etc.)
BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline

Nice to Have

Familiarity with cryptocurrency markets, DeFi, and blockchain protocols is a major plus

Work Arrangement

Remote (Worldwide)

Team

Structure: The Platform Team exists to accelerate engineering across Kraken by building and evolving the foundational infrastructure that powers development at scale. Its mission is to remove friction, solve systemic platform challenges, and ensure teams can ship quickly, reliably, and efficiently. The team defines and enforces engineering standards across APIs and services, improving consistency, performance, and scalability across the stack. It drives platform-wide architecture improvements, strengthens service interfaces, and ensures long-term maintainability as the system evolves. A core focus is performance and scale — proactively identifying bottlenecks, improving observability and tracing, and ensuring the platform stays ahead of production demands. The team establishes strong testing and performance baselines, enabling teams to automate stress testing and build confidently on a resilient foundation. Operating cross-functionally across engineering, the Platform Team works at every layer of the stack — from low-level networking to service architecture — strengthening the core systems that enable the entire organization to execute faster and at higher quality.

Additional Information

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
We hire strictly based on merit, meaning we seek out the candidates with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills considered the most suitable for the job.
We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgable about crypto!
We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments are designed to evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Assessment results are considered alongside other relevant information, such as experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.
As an equal opportunity employer, we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind. Whether that’s based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state or local laws.