Director of Engineering, Trading Platforms

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JOIN US ON OUR MISSION TO BECOME THE #1 RETAIL TRADING PLATFORM IN THE WORLD

Welcome to the dynamic world of NinjaTrader! As an industry-leading trading platform and futures broker, we're empowering traders to take control of their financial destiny. How do we do it? We provide cutting-edge products and services that enhance the trading journey. Whether a seasoned pro or just starting out, NinjaTrader equips traders with award-winning software and brokerage services to navigate the world's leading financial markets with confidence.

Our growth story is nothing short of exhilarating. Since 2003, NinjaTrader has been dedicated to understanding and supporting traders on their journey toward trading triumph. Through those efforts, our user base has grown to over 2 million users and we have become the number one rated futures brokerage worldwide.

But we're not stopping there. We're constantly evolving, pushing boundaries, and modernizing the futures industry. Our commitment to innovation means users will always have access to dynamic tools, real-time support, and a community of like-minded traders.

So, why work at NinjaTrader? Here, you're not just part of a team; you're part of a movement. We empower employees to reach new heights in their careers by providing a dynamic culture focused on social connection, professional development, and employee recognition initiatives. Sounds too good to be true? Take it from our employees.

Join us as we redefine what's possible in trading, advocate for our customers, and continue our journey toward becoming the world's top retail-focused trading platform in the world.

What you'll do:

NinjaTrader is modernizing the core of our high-throughput trading stack. We are seeking a Director of Engineering to own the end-to-end technical strategy and execution for our server-side trading platform—the matching engines, market-data services, risk controls, and order-routing pipelines that power millions of trades daily. You will lead multiple backend engineers, shape our cloud-native architecture, and ensure our systems remain low-latency, highly concurrent, and horizontally scalable as we grow.

In this role you will:

• Manage multiple engineering managers, fostering a high-performing organization and cultivating a culture of continuous improvement, quality, and reliability

• Attract, retain, and grow top-tier talent to build exceptional engineering teams that deliver delightful trading experiences

• Define and evolve the technical roadmap for the trading platform (matching, risk, market data, connectivity, clearing)

• Work closely with the CTO and Chief Architect to shape and refine the overarching engineering strategy

• Partner with SRE to enforce “everything-as-code” infrastructure (Terraform) and progressive deployment pipelines (FluxCD)

• Champion OpenTelemetry-first, vendor-agnostic observability that scales cost-effectively

• Collaborate with Product, Risk, Compliance, and Customer Success to translate trading-business objectives into robust backend capabilities

What you'll need:

• 15+ years of total software engineering experience, with 5+ years leading multiple backend or platform teams in a trading setup

• Proven track record building and operating low-latency, high-concurrency trading, market-data, or high-frequency messaging systems (equities, futures, FX, crypto, or similar)

• Deep knowledge of performance-oriented programming on the JVM (Scala, Java, Kotlin) or C++/Rust/Go, plus comfort reviewing code in any modern language

• Mastery of event-driven, partitioned, and stateful services (e.g., Kafka/Pub-Sub, Aeron, Redis, in-memory caches)

• Kubernetes/GKE experience and a strong automation-first mindset using CI/CD tools like Argo CD and GitHub Actions

• Demonstrated success implementing observability at scale using OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, and log pipelines with cost-efficiency in mind

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; comfortable defending architectural trade-offs to executive, product, and regulatory audiences

Bonus points for:

• Experience integrating with clearing firms, FIX gateways, and risk engines

• Familiarity with Scala, Akka/Pekko actor systems, and reactive-streams backpressure patterns

• Experience with Google Cloud (GKE, Cloud Logging, BigQuery)

Compensation:

The salary range for this role will be $200,000.00 - $250,000.00 USD. In addition, this position will also receive an annual target bonus of 15%. Bonus pay at NinjaTrader is based on individual performance (50%) as well as company/team performance (50%).

Salary and bonus earnings are only two components of the total compensation package offered by NinjaTrader. NinjaTrader offers a 401K plan through ADP under which the company will match up to 3.5% of employee contributions. Annual paid time off allowance accrues at a rate of 18 days per year (some positions may qualify for more) plus seven paid holidays. Additional details on our total compensation package and benefits are listed below.

Location:

This role is based in Chicago, IL. *There may be remote flexibility for exceptional candidates in the following states: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C., Wisconsin, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.

Hybrid:

For Chicago-based employees, we follow a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday, with remote work on Mondays and Fridays. In addition to these weekly remote days, we offer:

• 20 additional flex remote days annually

• 5 Company Wide Office-Optional weeks tied to major holidays

Our Core Benefits Include:

• Generous PTO

• 7 Paid Holidays Annually + 5 Conditional Holidays Annually

• 1 Service Day Annually

• 401k with 3.5% Company Match

• Paid Parental Bonding Leave

• Health, Vision, Dental Coverage

• Life and Disability Insurance Covered 100% by NinjaTrader

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.