Alpaca · 14 hours ago
VP of Engineering, Institutional Trading
United States
Full-time
Remote
Senior LevelAlpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure company. As the VP of Engineering for Institutional Trading, you will lead the engineering strategy to expand Alpaca's API-driven trading platform for sophisticated institutional use cases, focusing on building a high-performing team and evolving the platform architecture.
Developer APIsFinancial ServicesFinTechTrading Platform
Responsibilities
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
Qualification
Required
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
Preferred
Experience with algorithmic trading systems across multiple asset classes
Exposure to portfolio margin or cross-margining methodologies
Background supporting hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, or other institutional clients
Experience contributing to architecture standards or externally visible technical initiatives
Prior experience scaling trading platforms during periods of rapid growth
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
Company
Alpaca
Alpaca is a financial system platform that allows developers and businesses to build apps, embed investing, and trade algorithms.
Founded in 2015
201-500 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Alpaca has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2020 (2)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$138.8MKey Investors
SBI GroupPortage VenturesSpark Capital
2025-04-23Series C· $52M
2023-10-12Convertible Note· $15M
2021-08-30Series B· $50M
Leadership Team
Yoshi Yokokawa
Co-Founder and CEO
Hitoshi Harada
CPO and Co-Founder
Recent News
Morningstar.com
2026-01-07
2025-12-17
2025-12-09
Company data provided by crunchbase