Senior Engineer, Risk Engineering

About Bullish

Bullish is an institutionally focused global digital asset platform that provides market infrastructure and information services. These include:

• Bullish Exchange – a regulated and institutionally focused digital assets spot and derivatives exchange, integrating a high-performance central limit order book matching engine with automated market making to provide deep and predictable liquidity.
• CoinDesk Indices – a collection of tradable proprietary and single-asset benchmarks and indices that track the performance of digital assets for global institutions in the digital assets and traditional finance industries.
• CoinDesk Data - a broad suite of digital assets market data and analytics, providing real-time insights into prices, trends, and market dynamics.
• CoinDesk Insights – a digital asset media and events provider and operator of Coindesk.com, a digital media platform that covers news and insights about digital assets, the underlying markets, policy, and blockchain technology.

Reports to: Director, Engineering

Engineering Organization & Culture

At Bullish, we are engineering the institutional standard for the digital asset industry. Our mission is to build a platform where security and compliance are the foundational core, requiring a commitment to technical excellence that goes beyond simply delivering code. We operate as a global engineering organization, setting a high bar in a demanding environment for those driven to do the best work of their careers alongside world-class peers. We value engineers who treat development as a craft and own the outcome from concept to deployment. You will be expected to navigate the unknown, bring structure to ambiguity, and help shape the frameworks and processes that drive our global teams forward. We refuse to compromise on quality and seek problem solvers who thrive on high-impact technical challenges.

The Team: Risk Engineering

The Risk Engineering team builds the high-performance computational backbone that safeguards our exchange operations. Bridging quantitative finance and systems engineering, we optimize the mission-critical risk calculations that evaluate margin requirements, stress scenarios, and portfolio exposures in real-time, ensuring every trade is backed by solid financial guardrails. Our technical domain spans low-latency JVM optimization, zero-allocation hot paths and complex financial modeling.

What You’ll Do

• High-Performance JVM Engineering: Develop and maintain high-quality, scalable, and performant JVM services and APIs, with an eye toward low-latency and efficient memory management.
• Technical Translation & Risk Modeling: Work closely with senior technical leadership to understand risk models and decompose complex business requirements into well-tested, robust implementations.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with quantitative analysts and product teams to implement reliable solutions for financial products and risk models.
• Continuous Codebase Optimization: Actively optimize and refactor the existing codebase to enhance automated testing, performance, and maintainability.
• Engineering Excellence: Write clean, well-documented code, participate actively in code reviews, and champion agile best practices within the team.

What You’ll Bring

• Professional Experience: 5+ years of professional experience as a Java backend engineer.
• Mindset and Ownership: A strong sense of accountability and the agility to thrive and adapt in a dynamic startup environment.
• Language Proficiency: Advanced proficiency in Java, with a solid understanding of multi-threading, concurrency, and JVM performance tuning.
• Testing Methodologies: Strong hands-on experience with automated testing methodologies, including unit/integration testing, TDD, and exposure to simulation or stress testing.
• Software Design Fundamentals: Well-versed in Agile methodologies, design patterns, DRY principles, Clean Code, and microservices architecture.
• Technical Ecosystem: Proficient with modern DevOps and cloud tools, including Git, Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (GCP preferred).
• Financial Domain Awareness: Good foundational understanding of financial products, risk management concepts, or risk methodologies (e.g., SPAN, VaR).
• Analytical Aptitude: Strong mathematical, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
• Educational Foundation: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with event-sourced architectures, columnar databases, Kotlin, or low-latency libraries like Chronicle Queue.
• Interest or minor experience in mentoring junior peers and contributing to a collaborative engineering culture.

Bullish is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are fast evolving and striving towards being a globally-diverse community. With integrity at our core, our success is driven by a talented team of individuals and the different perspectives they are encouraged to bring to work every day.