Principal / Senior Staff Backend Engineer
Role Overview We’re looking for a Principal / Senior Staff Backend Engineer (IC5) to shape the technical strategy of ProphetX as a company. You’ll be a recognized technical authority who solves our hardest problems, sets multi-year architectural direction for our exchange platform, and multiplies the impact of the entire engineering organization.
Key Responsibilities
What You’ll Do - Define the long-term technical strategy and architecture for the exchange platform, aligned to business and regulatory goals. - Lead company-level technical initiatives with ambiguous scope and significant business risk or opportunity. - Drive critical decisions on scalability, resilience, and security for systems operating in a CFTC-regulated environment. - Evaluate and introduce new technologies, build-versus-buy choices, and engineering practices at an organizational level. - Advise executive and product leadership on technical feasibility, risk, and investment. - Mentor staff and senior engineers, and help shape hiring, leveling, and engineering culture. - Represent ProphetX’s engineering depth with partners, regulators, and the broader technical community where appropriate. - Partner with product and leadership to influence roadmap and prioritization with technical insight. - Proactively seek development opportunities and share knowledge with peers and junior engineers. Skills, Knowledge and Expertise What We’re Looking For - 10+ years of backend and distributed systems experience, including a track record of org- or company-wide technical impact - Expert-level command of Go, Java, C++, or Python, and of large-scale system design - Proven experience architecting and evolving mission-critical, low-latency, high-availability platforms (exchange, trading, payments, or comparable) - Mastery of event-driven architecture, real-time APIs, data systems, and cloud-native infrastructure - Deep experience with reliability, security, and compliance in regulated environments - History of mentoring and growing senior and staff engineers - Exceptional communication and influence skills, from engineers to executives - Proactive, growth-focused, and highly adaptable with a strong sense of ownership - Prediction markets, fintech, sports betting, or exchange experience is a plus Why Join Us! - Compensation & Ownership: Competitive compensation aligned to role and market; Equity opportunities so you share in what we’re building; A clear connection between impact and reward - Health & Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision coverage - Flexible time off built on trust and accountability - A culture that respects your time and avoids unnecessary meetings - Remote & Flexible Work: Fully remote within the U.S.; Flexibility to work in the way that helps you do your best work The Role - Set the multi-year technical direction for a live, CFTC-regulated exchange platform, as a recognized technical authority across the company - Take on a high-impact IC role with direct influence on executive and product decisions, build-versus-buy choices, and engineering culture - Help define what resilient, secure, and compliant exchange architecture looks like as a brand-new asset class scales