Alpaca

VP of Engineering – Institutional Trading

Alpaca

full-time

Posted on:

Location Type: Remote

Location: Anywhere in the World

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Job Level

Lead

Tech Stack

Distributed Systems

About the role

  • Define and own the engineering roadmap for Alpaca’s institutional trading platform
  • Build, lead, and scale a high-performing team of engineers with a strong culture of ownership and execution
  • Partner with the CTO and Global Head of Brokerage to align engineering priorities with institutional and prime brokerage strategy
  • Lead the evolution toward a multi-asset trading architecture supporting cross-margining across equities, options, FX, futures, and other derivatives
  • Design and deliver institutional trading capabilities, including but not limited to:
  • Drive architectural decisions across trading APIs, execution systems, real-time risk, margin engines, and analytics platforms
  • Set and enforce technical standards for performance, availability, scalability, and operational resilience in latency-sensitive systems
  • Coordinate multiple concurrent initiatives across trading, risk, margin, asset classes, and customer-facing tooling
  • Work cross-functionally with Product, Risk, Compliance, Operations, and Finance to deliver production-ready systems
  • Represent institutional trading engineering in executive-level planning and decision-making
  • Provide technical and architectural thought leadership in trading and brokerage technology, influencing direction internally and through industry engagement
  • Hands-on engineering, such as writing PoC code, conducting code reviews, deploying to production, and providing an L3 escalation contact point.

Requirements

  • A VP-level (or above) engineering leader with experience owning critical, market-facing platforms
  • Proven experience building and scaling engineering teams focused on complex, high-impact systems
  • Deep understanding of institutional trading and brokerage technology, including execution systems, risk and margin platforms, and trading analytics
  • Experience designing or operating systems that support cross-asset risk and margining across multiple asset classes
  • Strong architectural judgment and the ability to balance speed, reliability, and control in regulated environments
  • Deep knowledge of OS fundamentals and distributed systems, sufficient to set architectural direction and evaluate designs for performance-critical trading systems.
  • Effective partner to senior business, brokerage, and product leaders
  • Clear communicator with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Benefits
  • Competitive Salary & Stock Options
  • Health Benefits
  • New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
  • Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard skills
trading APIsexecution systemsreal-time riskmargin enginesanalytics platformscross-asset riskdistributed systemsperformance-critical systemstechnical standardsPoC code
Soft skills
leadershipcommunicationcollaborationarchitectural judgmentstrategic alignmentinfluencingproblem-solvingteam buildingcross-functional coordinationstakeholder engagement