Director of Engineering, Trading Platforms

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

Apply tot his job Apply To this Job