Staff Software Engineer - New Markets Japan

The role

A Staff Engineer will design, implement, and maintain scalable brokerage systems for the Japan market. This role involves developing middle- and back-office systems, coordinating with local regulators and vendors, and mentoring teammates.

What you will do

• Design highly scalable, mission-critical brokerage systems for the Japan market.
• Develop and enhance middle- and back-office systems including gRPC microservices and REST APIs.
• Integrate third-party vendors specific to the Japan market.
• Enhance core framework to support Japan-specific requirements like NISA and JP-GAAP accounting.
• Collaborate with global tech leads through Slack and meetings.
• Coordinate with local regulators, vendors, partners, and business stakeholders.
• Translate regulatory requirements into technical specifications for the global engineering team.
• Troubleshoot incidents and reported bugs.
• Participate in on-call rotations during Japan business hours.
• Contribute to regional recruitment initiatives and mentor teammates.

Required qualifications

• Business-level English fluency.
• Proven experience in designing and developing complex financial systems.
• Strong understanding of accounting principles, ledger structures, and transaction reconciliation.
• Experience in building scalable, high-availability financial applications that handle multi-currency transactions.
• Familiarity with regulatory compliance requirements in financial markets.
• Proficiency in at least one statically typed language (e.g. Go, Rust, Java, Kotlin, C#, Scala, or C++).
• Experience working with financial APIs, market data integrations, and trade settlement processes.
• Strong communication skills to collaborate with global teams, local regulators, vendors, and internal stakeholders.
• Strong computer science fundamentals and proven software engineering architecture experience.
• Ability to work independently in a fully remote, globally distributed team.
• Strategic thinking and the ability to translate technical concepts into business strategies.
• Experience with domain-driven design and event-driven design.

Nice to have

• Business level and above in Japanese
• Experience in the Japanese financial services sector
• Hands-on experience integrating with Japan market infrastructure such as JPX, JSCC, JASDEC, or major Japanese banks
• Experience with Japan-specific products such as NISA, iDeCo, tokutei-koza, or MyNumber handling
• Experience working in a startup or fast-growing technology company
• Knowledge of emerging technologies
• Experience or passion for financial markets
• Experience managing vendors and organizational budgeting
• Experience working with global, English-speaking teams across multiple time zones

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

About the company

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. The company serves hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with institutional-grade APIs.