Backend Engineer (Core)

Kalshi is defining a new category

Kalshi has defined a new category: prediction markets. Kalshi allows people to trade on the outcome of any events and turn any question about the future into a financial asset. Kalshi fought for years and legalized prediction markets in the US for the first time in history. Kalshi is currently the fastest growing financial market in America, and has thousands of markets across politics, economics, financials, weather, tech, AI, culture and more.

We believe prediction markets have the potential to be the largest financial market because they turn anything into a financial position. 

• Our vision: well… build the largest financial market on the planet. 

• Our mission: bring more truth to the world through the power of markets. 

Building a new category is hard… like really hard. But it’s beautiful and deeply fulfilling. Our culture is simple: we hire really talented people, work really hard, and enjoy the climb. We are looking for ambitious and exceptional people to join our (relatively small) team to help us build the next generation of financial markets.

Role Roadmap

We are building a next-generation financial ecosystem (think NYSE or CME from scratch). As part of Kalshi, you will work on various platforms, including core exchange, clearinghouse, API infrastructure, connectivity to brokers and market makers, and others. We are a small team, which means your responsibilities scale very rapidly, and your contributions are clear and visible, not marginal. There is still a lot of green field at Kalshi and a low of it (including entire systems) can be yours.

What you’ll do

• Order matching and trade execution algorithms and data structures.

• High-performance data feeds and trading APIs for clients.

• High guarantee and availability clearing systems, including margining, collateral management, and banking integrations.

• Lead integrations with external market makers, brokers, and hedge funds.

• Stress test large-scale critical systems to ensure their robustness and maintainability.

• Optimize database access patterns and internal algorithms to improve the performance of our different services.

• Design new market structures (e.g., non-binary markets, scalars, futures, etc.).

• Be close to the customer (define features, ship products, iterate)! Even the backend can choose to be close to customers depending on the project.

• Ship fast and with high quality.

• Make decisions: we give a lot of flexibility, which also means no spoon-feeding.

The company is growing fast, which means your role will evolve and grow with the company. Joining Kalshi means you’ll be exposed to all parts of the business and define our culture and product paths.

What we’re looking for

Attributes:

• 4+ years of software engineering experience.

• Experience planning and leading large projects with long-term impact on a single system or team.

• Strong technical grasp and ability to tackle complex engineering problems that deliver results.

• Solid understanding of relational databases and transactions.

• Familiar with writing highly concurrent systems.

• History of creating and applying new processes and tooling to increase engineering efficiency.

• Excellent judgment on task prioritizations.

• Growth mindset, with a high slope and eagerness to lean.

• Love of the craft: you genuinely care and put your all into your work.

• Can ship at incredible speed (very simple).

Bonus Points

• Experience building financial systems, FIX API, clearing infrastructure, broker connectivity, etc.

• Proven experience building large-scale systems

• Like to interact directly with customers.

Our Culture

Meritocracy is at our core, and we value people who take ownership and figure (usually hard) things out. We dream big. We love our craft deeply and are proud of what we put out in the world. We are committed to our vision of building something big… but also useful: a product that brings more truth through the power of markets.

Kalshians are Kalshi’s most important asset: we pick Kalshians carefully, so we trust them fully on day 1.

NYC Pay Transparency Disclosure:

Salary Range: $100,000 to $250,000 annually plus equity and benefits.

This salary range is based on the current available market data and represents the expected salary range for this role. Kalshi has minimal hierarchy and few titles, but a broad range of experience is represented within roles. Should you have compensation expectations that exceed these bands, we'd love to hear from you and would welcome you to reach out to discuss further.

Commitment to Equal Opportunity

Kalshi is committed to creating a culture of inclusion and belonging, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe it is our collective responsibility to uphold these values and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to join us in our mission. All qualified applicants will be treated with respect and receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, uniform service, veteran status, age, or any other protected characteristic per federal, state, or local law. If you are passionate about what you do and want to use your talents to support our mission and values, we’d love to hear from you.