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Posted 2 weeks ago

Software Engineer, Backend Systems

Crypto Trading Infrastructure Startup · San Francisco, CA (On-site)

Compensation
$185k – $300k
Equity
Competitive equity
Location
San Francisco, CA (On-site)
Stage
Seed

The process

  1. Application readA recruiter replies within seven days
  2. If it is a yesA recruiter contacts you about next steps
  3. Company interviewsEach company sets its own

A recruiter replies within seven days. Yes or no.

Who this is not for

  • Not remote — you are in the San Francisco office five days a week.
  • Not for engineers without production Rust experience.

About the company

Our client is a seed-stage crypto and fintech startup in San Francisco building the backend infrastructure for a high-performance, real-time trading platform. It has raised more than $15M, the team is about ten people, and the founder has spent more than a decade in crypto. The product processes live market data and coordinates trading across venues at scale, so the backend is the core of the business rather than a supporting layer.

The role

You would join as a backend engineer writing production Rust for the systems that trading, settlement and risk run on. The work is asynchronous, performance-driven and close to the market: risk and liquidation engines, state machines, live market data and low-latency APIs. The team works together in person five days a week in a high-bandwidth, collaborative setting. It suits an early-career engineer with real Rust experience who wants harder problems and a genuine interest in trading, rather than a quieter job.

What you'll do

  • Build and maintain risk and liquidation engines that manage risk and improve capital efficiency in volatile markets
  • Design and implement the blockchain state machines that power trading, settlement and risk operations
  • Develop services that keep state consistent across asynchronous processes using voting, consensus and coordination mechanisms
  • Process live market data and coordinate actions across trading venues, managing WebSocket streams and time-sensitive workflows
  • Build high-performance REST and WebSocket APIs that power the trading interface with millisecond-level response times

Nice to have

  • Experience in fintech, trading or blockchain
  • Low-latency or trading-systems experience, for example at a trading firm or on large-scale network infrastructure
  • Personal side projects, especially in Rust or C

Tech stack

Rust (async, with Tokio), C/C++, REST and WebSocket APIs, Docker, and relational, time-series and key-value databases.

Compensation & logistics

  • $185k–$300k base, plus competitive equity
  • Medical, dental, an HSA, a 401(k) match and a gym membership
  • On-site in San Francisco five days a week — this is not a remote role
  • Open to candidates who need no sponsorship, H-1B transfers (except in year 3 or year 6 of the H-1B) and TN status; the client will not file a new, first-time visa sponsorship
  • 2 to 4 years of experience as a backend software engineer
  • 3 to 5 hires planned
  • Six interview stages
  • Full-time

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