Building the Future of Open Finance
Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.
Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.
The Team
Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.
The Pro team is responsible for everything to do with the trading backend services such as the matching engine, market data gateways, internal and external APIs, and various other trading services. The team is located globally and responsibilities are split into sub-teams, working with various tech stacks. Our teams code in Rust and work agile around the globe. Recently, the team played a critical role in scaling Kraken's trading infrastructure.
The Opportunity
As an SDET II within Kraken Pro, you'll operate as an experienced individual contributor focused on quality engineering, automation, and developer productivity.
You'll own significant areas of Kraken's testing infrastructure, automation frameworks, and CI/CD tooling while partnering closely with engineers to improve reliability, testability, and release confidence across the Pro organisation.
Depending on the team or product area you join, you may work on matching engine services, market data infrastructure, external APIs, Futures and Derivatives systems, and other areas of the Pro trading stack.
This is a backend-focused role requiring strong engineering depth, a high degree of autonomy, and the ability to drive quality improvements across complex distributed systems.
- Design, build, and own automated testing frameworks covering backend APIs, integrations, and trading workflows.
- Drive improvements to CI/CD pipelines, automation tooling, and engineering productivity.
- Review technical designs and merge requests, identifying quality, reliability, and testability risks early.
- Investigate and resolve complex failures across distributed systems and trading infrastructure.
- Define automation approaches and testing strategies for new products and services.
- Mentor engineers and contribute to raising quality engineering standards across the team.
- Experience using AI-assisted development tools to improve productivity and quality.
- Partner with engineering leaders to continuously improve quality, reliability, and release processes.
What You Bring
- Strong Python/Rust/C++ skills with experience building production-quality automation frameworks, tooling, or internal engineering systems.
- Deep backend and API testing experience across REST, WebSocket, and protocols such as gRPC or FIX, including distributed systems.
- Experience designing and maintaining automation frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, testing infrastructure, and containerised environments.
- Experience within trading systems or other real-time, high-availability environments, with strong understanding of reliability, latency, and system behaviour.
- Strong understanding of trading concepts including order lifecycle, execution flows, margin, balances, and exchange mechanics.
- Demonstrated ability to investigate complex system failures and collaborate with engineers to drive resolution.
- Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Codex, Claude Code, or MCP integrations to improve engineering productivity.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to influence engineering decisions and mentor other engineers.
OUR COMMITMENT
Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.
We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.
As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis unless a specific deadline is stated in the posting.
STAY CONNECTED
Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/krakenfx
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kraken-exchange/
Kraken Blog: https://blog.kraken.com
Candidate Privacy Notice: https://www.kraken.com/legal/candidate-privacy-notice
Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.
Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.
We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.
We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.
As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.
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