Staff Software Engineer - New Markets Singapore/SEA

Responsibilities

Architect and build scalable brokerage middle- and back-office systems, including account, compliance, ledger, risk, and regional integration capabilities for Singapore and Southeast Asia. Lead regional technical hiring and cross-functional initiatives, mentor engineers, set engineering practices, and oversee incident response and operational reliability during Singapore business hours.

Requirements

Candidates need extensive experience building broker-dealer systems of record for end investors, including ledger-based financial systems, account and compliance infrastructure, and pre-trade risk controls. They must have advanced backend and distributed-systems expertise, familiarity with Singapore and Southeast Asian regulations, and the ability to provide technical leadership and incident command.

Skills

• Broker-Dealer Middle- and Back-Office Systems
• Double-Entry Ledger and Books-and-Records
• Clearing and Settlement
• Custody and Corporate Actions
• Reconciliation
• Customer Account Management
• KYC/CDD/AML and Sanctions Screening
• Pre-Trade Risk Controls
• Multi-Currency Buying-Power and Margin Engines
• Go
• REST and gRPC Microservices
• Domain-Driven Design
• Event-Driven Distributed Systems
• Incident Management
• Technical Leadership and Mentoring
• Singapore and Southeast Asian Regulatory Compliance

Benefits

• Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• Home-Office Setup Stipend
• Monthly Stipend

About this role

Who We Are:
Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more.

Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 10 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.

Alpaca is proudly backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:
We're a dynamic team of 400+ globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond!

We're searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca's rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.
Your Role:
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.
Things You Get To Do:
Architect and design highly scalable, mission-critical brokerage systems spanning multiple products or services.
Develop and enhance middle- and back-office systems, including gRPC microservices, APIs, and third-party vendor integrations.
Build customer account/PII systems, KYC/CDD/AML controls, and pre-trade multi-currency buying-power and margin engines.
Partner with core teams to extend frameworks for regional languages, currencies, and regulations, starting with Singapore and expanding to SEA markets.
Provide strategic technical insights and mentor engineers to shape the long-term engineering roadmap and foster technical growth.
Lead cross-functional projects and establish engineering standards, code review practices, and decision-making frameworks.
Serve as incident commander and operational reliability lead during regional business hours to ensure proactive 24/7 stability.
Participate in on-call rotations and ensure timely response to production issues.
Attend meetings held during Singapore business hours and occasional meetings with teams in other regions (including Japan, US, and EU).
Lead technical integrations and recruitment for market launches, engaging with regional stakeholders and regulators like the MAS.
Who You Are (Must-Haves):
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.
Deep architectural background in domain-driven design (DDD) and event-driven distributed systems for high-availability financial applications.
Thorough familiarity with Singapore regulatory requirements (MAS, Securities and Futures Act, MAS Notice SFA04-N02 on AML/CFT) and broader Southeast Asian...

About Alpaca

Financial Services · 201-500 employees · headquartered in San Mateo, California · founded 2017