Senior Staff Software Engineer - Rust - Platform

Building the Future of Crypto. Our Krakenites are a world‑class team with crypto conviction, united by our desire to discover and unlock the potential of crypto and blockchain technology. What makes us different? Kraken is a mission‑focused company rooted in crypto values. As a Krakenite, you’ll join us on our mission to accelerate the global adoption of crypto, so that everyone can achieve financial freedom and inclusion.

For over a decade, Kraken’s focus on our mission and crypto ethos has attracted many of the most talented crypto experts in the world. Before you apply, please read the Kraken Culture page to learn more about our internal culture, values, and mission. We also expect candidates to familiarize themselves with the Kraken app.

As a fully remote company, we have Krakenites in 70+ countries who speak over 50 languages. Krakenites are industry pioneers who develop premium crypto products for experienced traders, institutions, and newcomers to the space. Kraken is committed to industry‑leading security, crypto education, and world‑class client support through our products like Kraken Pro, Desktop, Wallet, and Kraken Futures. Become a Krakenite and build the future of crypto!

Proof of work

The Platform Team exists to accelerate engineering across Kraken by building and evolving the foundational infrastructure that powers development at scale. Its mission is to remove friction, solve systemic platform challenges, and ensure teams can ship quickly, reliably, and efficiently. The team defines and enforces engineering standards across APIs and services, improving consistency, performance, and scalability across the stack. It drives platform‑wide architecture improvements, strengthens service interfaces, and ensures long‑term maintainability as the system evolves. A core focus is performance and scale — proactively identifying bottlenecks, improving observability and tracing, and ensuring the platform stays ahead of production demands. The team establishes strong testing and performance baselines, enabling teams to automate stress testing and build confidently on a resilient foundation. Operating cross‑functionally across engineering, the Platform Team works at every layer of the stack — from low‑level networking to service architecture — strengthening the core systems that enable the entire organization to execute faster and at higher quality.

The opportunity

• Collaborate closely with Product, DevOps, SRE, and Security teams to ensure Kraken's platform is reliable, secure, and scalable.
• Mentor senior and mid‑level engineers, influencing best practices in system design, testing, and performance optimization.
• Take ownership of system‑wide architectural initiatives and shape long‑term technical strategy.
• Contribute to the team’s incident response, root cause analysis, and system hardening efforts.
• Champion continuous improvement by introducing new tools, techniques, and technologies that raise the bar for backend engineering.

Skills You Should HODL

• 10+ years of experience designing and implementing high‑performance backend systems, preferably in finance, trading, or distributed environments.
• Deep expertise in at least one systems language (C++, Go, or Rust) and solid scripting knowledge in Python.
• Strong familiarity with Linux systems, including low‑level debugging, concurrency, and profiling.
• Experience building and optimizing low‑latency, high‑throughput services handling large‑scale transaction volumes.
• Demonstrated ability to make data‑driven architectural decisions and communicate trade‑offs clearly.
• Experience with distributed systems, messaging queues, and inter‑service communication protocols (gRPC, REST, etc.).
• Familiarity with cryptocurrency markets, DeFi, and blockchain protocols is a major plus.
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline.

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.

Kraken is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate all Krakenites for their diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions and unique perspectives. We hire strictly based on merit, meaning we seek out the candidates with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills considered the most suitable 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 are designed to evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Assessment results are considered alongside other relevant information, such as 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 that’s 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.