Director / Staff Engineer Backend

Director / Staff Engineer Backend

Location: Chicago, IL (Hybrid)

Overview

Our client is seeking a senior backend engineering leader to architect and build mission-critical systems supporting a high-performance financial technology platform.

This role focuses on designing and implementing low-latency distributed systems capable of processing high-volume transactional data while maintaining reliability and operational integrity.

Responsibilities Architecture & System Design

• Lead the design of high-performance distributed systems and platform architecture

• Evaluate frameworks, protocols, and data architectures for scalability and reliability

• Design messaging and data processing infrastructure supporting high-throughput systems

Development

• Develop performance-critical backend systems including order processing and transactional workflows

• Build distributed systems using event streaming, relational databases, and in-memory processing

• Develop APIs supporting real-time programmatic access

Leadership

• Establish engineering standards, code quality practices, and development workflows

• Mentor engineers and guide architecture decisions across teams

• Collaborate with product and business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical designs

Operations

• Ensure production systems meet strict reliability and performance SLAs

• Participate in incident response and system troubleshooting

• Evaluate emerging technologies to improve performance and productivity

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

• 8+ years of software engineering experience

• Expert Java development experience

• Experience building high-performance distributed systems

• Strong understanding of networking protocols and API development

• Experience with Kafka, PostgreSQL, and microservices architectures

• Experience in financial systems or trading technology is highly desirable

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