Staff Software Engineer - New Markets Japan (JLPT N1 Fluent)

NOTE: PLEASE DO NOT APPLY UNLESS YOU'RE JLPT N1 (FLUENT JAPANESE)

Your Role:

As a Staff Engineer, we want you to be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining the systems and services that form Alpaca's foundation and empower millions of users who trade billions of dollars worth of assets. We will look to you to contribute to regional recruitment initiatives, help drive cross-functional team projects, mentor teammates with respect to our engineering principles and practices, and foster Alpaca culture in the Japan region. We expect you to participate in operational reliability engineering during regional business hours, helping to ensure proactive 24x7 stability of our platform.

For this role, we are seeking an experienced backend engineer who is dedicated to delivering seamless and high-quality software solutions. The ideal candidate has a proven track record of designing and building scalable applications, is comfortable challenging conventions and advocating for innovative solutions, and can bridge engineering work with Japan-specific regulatory, vendor, and partner requirements. In this position, we would like you to have the autonomy to architect and implement solutions that meet our strategic objectives while also actively contributing to the goal-setting process alongside a collaborative, cross-functional team.

Things You Get To Do:

• 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.

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

• 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.

Who You Might Be (Nice-To-Haves):

• 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.