Summary
Are you a frontend engineer who treats rendering pipelines, frame budgets, and library API design as a craft? Topstep is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help build a custom charting engine for the TopstepX trading platform — a framework-agnostic library that renders the real-time charts thousands of active traders rely on every day.
The library is organized as overlapping rendering layers — candles, grid, indicators, positions, drawings — most rendered on Canvas 2D. Your work spans the layer system, real-time data plumbing, indicator math, drawing tools, and the public API the rest of the platform builds against. You'll also build and maintain the React binding that adapts the core for the TopstepX web app; a React Native binding will follow as the mobile app matures. A WebGL layer may be added later for higher-density visualizations. The core has no framework dependencies; the bindings are thin wrappers above it.
This role is ideal for someone who has shipped a production charting or visualization library before, understands what it takes to keep an interactive UI smooth while data flows in the background, and has strong opinions on what makes a good API. You'll set the bar for performance, write the abstractions other engineers will consume, and help define what engineering excellence means for this initiative.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and build core systems of the charting engine — rendering primitives (layer system, hit testing, dirty-region rendering, text measurement) and domain features (drawing tools, indicator math).
- Own the framework-agnostic core library architecture, including the public API that React, React Native, and direct consumers integrate against.
- Build and maintain the React binding — the thin wrapper layer that adapts the core's public API into framework-native components, hooks, and lifecycle integration. The React Native binding follows as the mobile app matures.
- Drive architectural decisions on canvas compositing, layer strategy, and main-thread vs. worker-thread boundaries.
- Define and uphold rendering performance standards across the engine — 60fps frame-budget discipline and pointer-interaction responsiveness under continuous data flow.
- Build the data integration layer that bridges the existing real-time data pipeline into the charting engine.
- Ensure charting engine is consistent and performant across a wide range of devices, from desktop to tablets to mobile.
- Establish visual testing standards including pixel diffing, deterministic replay-based tests, and golden-image regression discipline.
- Lead architectural reviews and RFCs for the charting library, driving consensus on library architecture across the trading platform without direct authority.
- Mentor engineers on the charting team through code reviews, design reviews, pairing, and technical coaching.
- Balance technical debt with feature delivery based on long-term library health and consumer needs.
- Communicate technical direction, trade-offs, and risk clearly to engineering peers and platform leadership.
Required Qualifications and Key Competencies
- 8 + years of frontend engineering experience building and shipping production systems.
- Prior experience building or contributing to a production charting library, data visualization framework, or comparable interactive rendering system.
- Working knowledge of financial markets — OHLCV, tick data, and futures conventions — sufficient to make informed product and architectural trade-offs.
- Deep proficiency in TypeScript including strict mode, advanced generics, and designing public APIs that other engineers consume.
- Deep proficiency in React, including production experience designing component libraries, hooks APIs, or framework binding layers.
- Production experience with frontend graphics rendering, particularly Canvas 2D — multi-layer compositing, dirty-region rendering, and text metrics.
- Demonstrated performance discipline for 60fps real-time rendering — Chrome profiler fluency, frame-budget analysis, and the ability to keep pointer-driven interactions smooth while data flows continuously in the background.
- Production experience with Web Workers and SharedArrayBuffer — zero-copy data pipelines, typed-array views over shared memory, Atomics for generation counters, and off-main-thread compute architecture.
- 2D math fluency — coordinate transforms, viewport projection, and hit testing.
- Track record of architecting libraries with public APIs that consumers integrate against without leaking implementation details.
- Discipline around visual testing — pixel diffing, deterministic replay-based tests, and willingness to write and maintain them.
- Proven ability to influence technical direction across teams without direct authority.
Nice to Have
- Production experience with real-time streaming systems — WebSocket lifecycle, backpressure, reconnection, and replay.
- React Native, react-native-skia, expo-gl, or JSI experience.
- Order flow and market microstructure knowledge — footprint charts, volume profile, DOM, cumulative delta.
- MessagePack or protobuf experience for binary serialization on the data pipeline.
- WebGL2 experience — for a possible future high-density rendering layer.
- WebGPU / WGSL experience (long-term migration target).
- Rust + WASM experience (the indicator compute layer is the most likely candidate for a Rust rewrite).
- PineScript or other charting DSL familiarity (for transpiler/runtime work in a later phase).
- Open source contributions to graphics, charting, or financial libraries.
Company Culture & Perks
- Topstep is an engaging working environment which ranges from fully remote to hybrid. We foster a culture of collaboration with cameras on during meetings and a robust Slack environment for communication.
- Seven Company-paid Holidays and generous Family Leave. Paid time off is front-loaded.
- Competitive 401(k) matching, health, dental, and vision insurance is offered for full time employees.
- Vacations are encouraged with a bonus for taking 5 consecutive days. Employee referrals are bonused. Topstep offers a food and groceries budget and contributes towards health and wellness.
New Hire Base Salary Range
- $200,000 – $225,000.
- Bonus: This position is eligible for a performance-based bonus as provided by the plan terms and governing documents.
- The compensation offered will take into account internal compensation structure and may vary depending on the candidate's geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Topstep is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all employees and applicants are valued. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status, in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
Interested in the role? Apply today with your resume!
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