Senior Software Engineer - CoreTalos is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Core team, focused on building and maintaining the foundational platform infrastructure that powers the entire Talos trading ecosystem.
This role centers on high-performance, distributed systems engineering: designing low-latency messaging infrastructure using Aeron, building and evolving the API layers (FIX, WebSocket, REST) consumed by product teams across the firm, and maintaining the sequencer and market data distribution pipelines that sit at the heart of Talos' architecture. You will work on deeply technical problems at the intersection of distributed systems, financial protocols, and infrastructure reliability.
This is an opportunity to go deep on platform craft - shaping the infrastructure that every team at Talos builds on, and solving problems where the margin for error is low and the design space is wide open.
Responsibilities- Design, develop, and maintain high-performance platform services including API gateways (FIX, WebSocket, REST), and the core libraries that product teams across Talos build on.
- Build and evolve Aeron-based messaging infrastructure for reliable, low-latency communication.
- Tackle hard distributed systems problems end-to-end: ordering and determinism guarantees, zero-downtime deployments, active-active architectures spanning cloud regions, and crash-consistent recovery.
- Work cross-functionally to ensure platform primitives meet the throughput and latency requirements of real-time trading workflows, including market data distribution at scale.
- Provide product teams with reusable service infrastructure to build scalable, reliable, and cost-efficient services.
Qualifications- 7+ years of backend engineering experience with deep proficiency in Go, C++, Java, Rust or similar systems languages.
- Demonstrated ownership of large-scale distributed systems, from initial design through deployment, scaling, and long-term operations.
- Strong systems-level fundamentals: concurrency primitives, memory layout, I/O models, database design, network protocols, and the performance implications of each.
- Experience designing systems with stringent correctness guarantees - ordering, consistency, durability - not just ones that work under normal conditions.
- Own projects end-to-end: take work from problem definition through design, implementation, and rollout, and see it through to completion without needing to be chased.
- Track record of leading technical decisions: navigating ambiguity, defining architecture, making meaningful trade-offs, and bringing a team along on the reasoning.
- Comfortable operating at multiple levels of abstraction, from API contract design down to diagnosing latency spikes at the socket or disk layer.
Preferred - Experience with Aeron or comparable low-latency messaging frameworks (e.g., Chronicle, LMAX Disruptor, ZeroMQ).
- Hands-on experience building geo-distributed or multi-site systems with active-active replication and regional failover.
- Familiarity with FIX protocol (4.x/5.x) or other structured financial messaging formats.
- Background in trading infrastructure, market data systems, or other latency-sensitive financial platforms.
- Experience with sequencer design, write-ahead logging, or custom persistence engines.
BenefitsYou will also enjoy a comprehensive array of competitive benefits, regardless of your location, within our warm, welcoming, and ambitious company culture. Some of our benefits include:
- Retirement plan contributions
- Unlimited Vacation + a PTO bonus: Employees that take 15 days of vacation, with 5 days being consecutive, receive a $2000 USD bonus.
- Bonus and stock ownership
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Paid parental leave for 20 weeks, after 1 year of service
- Global offsites and team outings
- A one-time stipend towards at-home office set-up for all employees
- A wellness credit of $50 accrued monthly, to go towards things like gym memberships, ski-passes, and work out classes.
- A lunch credit of $25 USD towards lunches for days in-office
- Donation matching up to $100 USD annually
- Other in-office perks: Catered lunches on Tuesdays, snacks, and drinks
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