7+ years of backend engineering experience with deep proficiency in Go, C++, Java, Rust or similar systems languages
Demonstrated ownership of large-scale distributed systems, from initial design through deployment, scaling, and long-term operations
Strong systems-level fundamentals: concurrency primitives, memory layout, I/O models, database design, network protocols, and the performance implications of each
Experience designing systems with stringent correctness guarantees — ordering, consistency, durability — not just ones that work under normal conditions
Own projects end-to-end: take work from problem definition through design, implementation, and rollout, and see it through to completion without needing to be chased
Track record of leading technical decisions: navigating ambiguity, defining architecture, making meaningful trade-offs, and bringing a team along on the reasoning
Comfortable operating at multiple levels of abstraction, from API contract design down to diagnosing latency spikes at the socket or disk layer
(Desirable) Experience with Aeron or comparable low-latency messaging frameworks (e.g., Chronicle, LMAX Disruptor, ZeroMQ)
(Desirable) Hands-on experience building geo-distributed or multi-site systems with active-active replication and regional failover
(Desirable) Familiarity with FIX protocol (4.x/5.x) or other structured financial messaging formats
(Desirable) Background in trading infrastructure, market data systems, or other latency-sensitive financial platforms
(Desirable) Experience with sequencer design, write-ahead logging, or custom persistence engines
What the job involves
Talos is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Core team, focused on building and maintaining the foundational platform infrastructure that powers the entire Talos trading ecosystem
This role centers on high-performance, distributed systems engineering: designing low-latency messaging infrastructure using Aeron, building and evolving the API layers (FIX, WebSocket, REST) consumed by product teams across the firm, and maintaining the sequencer and market data distribution pipelines that sit at the heart of Talos’ architecture
You will work on deeply technical problems at the intersection of distributed systems, financial protocols, and infrastructure reliability
This is an opportunity to go deep on platform craft — shaping the infrastructure that every team at Talos builds on, and solving problems where the margin for error is low and the design space is wide open
Design, develop, and maintain high-performance platform services including API gateways (FIX, WebSocket, REST), and the core libraries that product teams across Talos build on
Build and evolve Aeron-based messaging infrastructure for reliable, low-latency communication
Tackle hard distributed systems problems end-to-end: ordering and determinism guarantees, zero-downtime deployments, active-active architectures spanning cloud regions, and crash-consistent recovery
Work cross-functionally to ensure platform primitives meet the throughput and latency requirements of real-time trading workflows, including market data distribution at scale
Provide product teams with reusable service infrastructure to build scalable, reliable, and cost-efficient services