Backend trading system developer

Backend Trading Systems Engineer

BlockRouteLabs · Remote · Contract

About BlockRouteLabs

At BlockRouteLabs, we build systematic trading infrastructure and strategies for digital asset markets. Our focus spans centralized exchanges, decentralized finance (DeFi), and on-chain execution environments. We prioritize transparency, statistical rigor, and real-world performance.

Founded in 2020 and operating as a globally distributed team since 2026, we are a lean team of 11–50 specialists. We trade proprietary capital — internally funded and grown through reinvested trading profits — which keeps us independent, fast-moving, and focused on real results.

About the Role

As a Backend Trading Systems Engineer, you will build and operate the production systems that run our strategies live: market-data ingestion, order routing and execution, position tracking, and real-time risk controls across centralized exchanges and DEXs.

This is money-moving code in a market that never closes — correctness, reliability, and observability come first. You will work closely with the quant and simulation teams to take strategies from research into dependable production systems.

Responsibilities

Design and build backend services for real-time market-data ingestion, order management, and execution

Implement and maintain venue integrations, including CEX REST/WebSocket APIs and DEX smart-contract interaction

Build order-lifecycle management, position tracking, and reconciliation against venue records

Implement pre-trade and runtime risk controls, including exposure limits, rate limiting, and kill switches

Engineer for reliability: failover, idempotent order handling, graceful degradation, and safe restarts

Instrument systems end to end with metrics, structured logging, alerting, and dashboards

Partner with quant and simulation teams to deploy strategies from research into production

Contribute to testing standards, code review, incident response, and postmortems

Qualifications

4+ years of backend engineering experience building distributed, real-time, or high-throughput systems

Expert proficiency in at least one of Python, Go, Rust, or C++ [narrow this to your actual stack]

Hands-on experience with WebSocket/REST API integrations, messaging or streaming systems (e.g., Redis, Kafka, ZeroMQ), and relational or time-series databases

Strong fundamentals in concurrency, networking, and performance

Rigor around correctness in systems that handle money: testing, reconciliation, and defensive design

Ability to communicate clearly and document systems well

Preferred Qualifications

Direct experience with crypto venues: exchange API integrations (e.g., via CCXT or native clients) or DEX interaction through web3 tooling

Understanding of on-chain transaction mechanics, including nonce management, gas strategy, and MEV-aware submission (e.g., private relays)

Prior work on OMS/EMS, market-making, or other latency-sensitive trading systems

Ability to read Solidity and reason about smart-contract behavior

Experience operating 24/7 production systems with on-call responsibility

What We Offer

Ownership of production systems where correctness and uptime directly protect trading capital

Access to production-grade market data, execution infrastructure, and real trading feedback loops

A small, senior team with minimal process overhead and fast decision-making

Compensation tied directly to the quality and impact of your work

Position Details

Type: Contract (independent contractor), fully remote

Commitment: Part-time (20 hours per week) or full-time (40 hours per week)

Term: Initial [3–6 month] engagement, with the option to extend or convert to a longer-term arrangement based on results and mutual fit

Hours: Flexible, with at least [4] hours of daily overlap with US Eastern Time (ET)

Compensation

Contract rate of $70–90 per hour (USD), benchmarked against top-tier quant and crypto firms

Performance-based bonus tied to your impact and overall trading performance

Equity or token-based incentives, where applicable

Hiring Process

Intro call (30 minutes) — background, motivation, and mutual fit

Technical discussion (60–90 minutes) — system design, concurrency, and venue/API integration

[Paid] coding exercise — a scoped task, such as building a small, well-tested order-handling or market-data service

Final conversation — logistics, expectations, and offer

We aim to complete the full process within [two to three weeks].