Staff Software Engineer - New Markets Singapore/SEA

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be responsible for architecting, designing, and implementing the systems and services that form Alpaca's foundation and empower millions of users who trade billions of dollars worth of assets. You will serve as a technical leader with extensive influence that goes beyond the immediate team to affect the entire product's technical direction. You will be the founding technical lead for Singapore and the broader SEA region: leading regional recruitment, leading cross-functional projects, mentoring talent on our engineering principles and practices, and fostering Alpaca culture in the region.

As the lead, you will also serve as the operational reliability and engineering lead and the incident commander during regional business hours, ensuring proactive 24x7 stability.

For this role, we are seeking a backend engineer who has built the middle- and back-office systems that are a broker-dealer's system of record — customer account management and KYC, pre-trade controls such as buying-power validation, post-trade processing, double-entry ledgers and books-and-records, clearing and settlement, custody, corporate actions, reconciliation, and regulatory reporting — for a firm serving end investors. This is not a front-office trading-systems role: experience limited to sell-side market-making, low-latency/high-frequency execution, quantitative trading strategy, or exchange-side trading infrastructure is not sufficient on its own.

The ideal candidate has a track record of architecting solutions that span multiple products or services, acts as a mentor and consultant providing strategic technical insights, and can take a platform into new markets repeatedly as Alpaca expands across SEA.

• Business-level English fluency, with the ability to collaborate effectively in English-only team meetings, design discussions, code reviews, and written documentation.
• Extensive hands-on experience building broker-dealer middle- and back-office systems of record (clearing, settlement, custody, corporate actions, reconciliation) serving end investors rather than trading desks.
• Proven track record architecting and developing complex financial systems grounded in a double-entry ledger and books-and-records model.
• Deep experience engineering customer account management infrastructure with sensitive PII handling, alongside KYC/CDD/AML and sanctions screening across the full account lifecycle.
• Demonstrated experience implementing pre-trade risk and eligibility controls, including real-time multi-currency buying-power calculation, margin requirements, and order validation.
• Advanced proficiency in Go or similar modern backend languages, with extensive production experience designing high-throughput REST and gRPC microservices.