Senior / Staff Software Engineer — Algorithmic Execution Platform

Location: Strongly prefer New York, NY or Lisle, IL (Hybrid — 4 days in office)

About Clear Street

Clear Street's mission is to give every sophisticated investor access to every asset, in every market, through a unified platform built for speed, transparency, and scale.

We give our clients the technology, tools, and service once reserved for the largest institutions — rebuilt with modern infrastructure. Our single, cloud-native, end-to-end capital markets platform powers investor growth today and is transforming how they interact with markets tomorrow.

For more information, visit clearstreet.io.

The Team

The Algorithmic Execution Services team builds Clear Street's electronic trading platform, delivering best execution across equities, options, and futures in U.S. and international markets. We develop low-latency order routing, algorithmic strategies, smart order logic, and direct market access — with a relentless focus on performance, scalability, and real-time risk controls.

We are building the next generation of our execution infrastructure from the ground up. The goal is to replace fragmented, vendor-dependent solutions with a single, modular platform that is observable, data-driven, and designed to scale with our business and our clients. The near-term milestone is direct market access in production with institutional clients by end of 2026. The longer-term vision is a unified platform for multi-asset, multi-region electronic trading — with smart strategies, a research environment, and algorithmic execution across equities, options, futures, FX, crypto, and global markets all running on shared infrastructure.

This is a greenfield platform effort. We are not patching what exists — we are building what comes next.

The Role

This is a core infrastructure role on a small, focused team. You will be one of the foundational engineers shaping and building our new execution platform — a low-latency, C++-based system with client-facing FIX connectivity, institutional-grade risk controls, and deep integration across U.S. exchanges and dark venues.

What you'll build

Client-facing FIX gateway — design and harden the FIX acceptor that serves as the primary inbound order entry point for institutional clients; own the full order lifecycle including order entry, fills, ACKs, rejects, and outbound sequencing

Market data infrastructure — build and maintain production-grade feed handlers for exchange protocols (ITCH, OUCH, binary) across major U.S. exchanges and ATSs, replacing legacy market data dependencies with proprietary, low-latency infrastructure

Execution and venue connectivity — build and optimize the venue connectivity layer; own latency profiling and hot-path analysis from order receipt through exchange acknowledgment

Pre-trade risk controls — architect and implement real-time risk checks with a clear understanding of where each check sits in the critical path; balance correctness guarantees with microsecond-level latency budgets

Platform infrastructure — contribute to configuration and command & control architecture, normalized internal message representation, and audit-trail logging systems

Algorithmic strategy migration — over time, help move existing algorithmic strategies off legacy infrastructure onto the new platform — component by component, with the current solution running until it is fully replaced

What comes next (12–24 months)

As the core platform stabilizes, you will have the opportunity to contribute to a broader roadmap — including a research and backtesting environment, expansion into additional asset classes (options, futures, FX, crypto), and support for international markets including Europe and Canada. The platform is designed to support all of this from a shared execution layer. The engineers hired now will shape what that looks like.

What We Value

• Engineers who are biased toward action and make sound tradeoffs with incomplete information
• Deep ownership — you care about correctness and performance well beyond your immediate scope
• Strong communication across engineering, trading, and operations
• A willingness to challenge assumptions and raise the bar on how we build

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience building high-performance, low-latency systems in C++ in a production environment
• Deep knowledge of FIX protocol (4.2/4.4) and the full order lifecycle — entry, routing, execution, cancellation, and reporting
• Experience with exchange market data protocols (ITCH, OUCH, binary feed formats) and building production-grade feed handlers
• Strong understanding of low-latency architecture — kernel bypass, lock-free data structures, CPU affinity, memory layout, and hot-path profiling
• Experience with multicast messaging (Aeron, LBM, or equivalent publish/subscribe transport)
• Solid grasp of U.S. equity market structure: order types, Reg NMS, venue routing, lit and dark pools
• Comfortable working in Linux, including performance tuning at the OS level
• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related STEM field
• Nice to Have
• Experience building algorithmic execution or SOR infrastructure at a broker-dealer, prop firm, or exchange
• Familiarity with options or futures execution infrastructure
• Experience with pre-trade risk system design — firm-level and account-level controls
• Knowledge of CAT reporting requirements and how they shape system design
• Experience building platforms designed to service multiple asset classes from a shared execution layer
• Exposure to international markets and cross-region system design

Experience with fractionalization and/or internalization

Proficiency in Python for internal tooling and test infrastructure

Familiarity with containerization and Kubernetes-based deployment