Alpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure for financial services. They are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design and maintain systems for the Japan market, focusing on delivering high-quality software solutions and collaborating with local stakeholders.
Responsibilities:
- Design highly scalable, mission-critical brokerage systems for the Japan market
- Develop and enhance the middle- and back-office systems, including gRPC microservices, REST and gRPC APIs, and third-party vendor integrations specific to the Japan market (e.g. JPX, JSCC, JASDEC, banks, identity verification vendors)
- Work closely with Alpaca's core teams to enhance and transform the core framework, enabling support for multiple languages, currencies, and markets, with a particular focus on Japan-specific requirements such as NISA, MyNumber, withholding tax, and JP-GAAP accounting
- Collaborate with tech leads in other regions both synchronously and asynchronously, primarily through Slack and meetings, to align with global teams
- Coordinate in Japanese with local regulators, vendors, partners, and business stakeholders, and translate those requirements into technical specifications for the global engineering team
- Troubleshoot incidents and reported bugs to maintain system integrity and performance
- Participate in on-call rotations and assist with timely engineering projects and production issues during Japan business hours
- Thrive in a global environment, effectively navigating regulatory requirements and building scalable solutions to support Alpaca's expansion in Japan
Requirements:
- Native or JLPT N1 level fluency in Japanese, with the ability to read, write, and communicate professionally with local regulators, vendors, and partners
- Business-level English fluency, with the ability to collaborate effectively in English-only team meetings, design discussions, code reviews, and written documentation
- Proven experience in designing and developing complex financial systems, preferably including double-entry accounting
- 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, with a preference for experience in Japan (FIEA, FSA, JSDA, JIPF, or related frameworks)
- Proficiency in at least one statically typed language (e.g. Go, Rust, Java, Kotlin, C#, Scala, or C++), with expertise in designing robust and efficient system architectures
- Experience working with financial APIs, market data integrations, and trade settlement processes
- Strong communication skills to collaborate effectively with global teams, local regulators, vendors, and internal stakeholders, bridging Japanese and English contexts
- Strong computer science fundamentals and proven software engineering architecture experience
- Ability to work independently in a fully remote, globally distributed team, and under pressure in a fast-paced environment
- Strategic thinking and the ability to translate technical concepts into business strategies
- Experience with domain-driven design and event-driven design
- Strong problem-solving skills paired with a proactive mindset
- Ability to lead and troubleshoot incidents or bugs with authority during Japan business hours
- Proficiency in Go, or willingness to ramp up quickly — Go is Alpaca's primary backend language
- Experience in the Japanese financial services sector (securities firms, banks, brokerages, or fintech)
- Hands-on experience integrating with Japan market infrastructure such as JPX (TSE/OSE), 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