Director of Engineering, Trading Platform

Summary:
We are seeking a Director of Engineering, Trading Platform to lead and scale the Trading Platform organization responsible for building and operating our core trading systems. Reporting to the Head of Trading Platform, this role balances strategic leadership with operational execution to ensure the platform can support increasing transaction volumes, business growth, and revenue-critical initiatives.

The Director of Engineering, Trading Platform will focus on scaling the team, processes, and organizational capabilities, while partnering with technical leadership on architecture and platform evolution. This role works closely with trading, product, and operations leaders to translate business objectives into reliable, high-performing systems. Success is measured by platform uptime, delivery predictability, team effectiveness, and contribution to revenue-critical outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Platform Delivery & Business Impact
  Lead delivery of platform features that drive trading activity, customer growth, and revenue, ensuring high availability, low latency, and operational reliability.
  
  
• Engineering Leadership & Organizational Scaling
  Manage and grow multiple cross-functional engineering teams through engineering managers. Drive hiring, onboarding, mentorship, and performance management, ensuring career ladders and growth plans are clearly defined and executed.
  
  
• Organizational Design & Effectiveness
  Design and evolve team structures, roles, and workflows to enable scale. Identify organizational bottlenecks early and implement solutions to improve efficiency and accountability.
  
  
• Architecture & Technical Strategy
  Partner with technical leadership to guide the evolution of platform architecture, focusing on scalability, resilience, and maintainability. Provide guidance on architecture and technical decisions while empowering teams to execute effectively.
  
  
• Operational Excellence & Reliability
  Own platform-level operational metrics, including uptime, incident frequency, and support processes. Drive continuous improvement in system reliability, monitoring, and support workflows to ensure business continuity.
  
  
• Process & Quality Improvement
  Define and standardize engineering processes, development workflows, and release practices to increase delivery predictability, product quality, and team efficiency.
  
  
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
  Collaborate closely with trading, product, and operations stakeholders to prioritize work, manage trade-offs, and ensure engineering execution aligns with business goals. Serve as a bridge between technical and business teams to drive impactful outcomes.
  
  
• Compliance & Risk Support
  Partner with security, compliance, and operational teams to ensure the platform meets regulatory and risk management requirements, while enabling growth and speed of execution.

Required Qualifications and Key Competencies

Experience / Management

• Engineering Experience: 10+ years building complex, high-reliability systems
• Management Experience: 5+ years managing multiple engineering teams, including engineering managers and cross-functional groups across distributed teams and multiple time zones
• Senior Leadership Experience: 3+ years in senior engineering leadership roles, influencing organizational strategy, technical priorities, and cross-functional decision-making
• Proven success leading teams delivering complex, revenue-critical platforms
• Track record of scaling engineering organizations while maintaining delivery quality and reliability and supporting business growth
• Strong people leadership skills, including hiring, performance management, and talent development

Technical & Architecture

• Extensive experience with high-volume, high-throughput systems, ensuring platforms can handle large workloads efficiently
• Strong expertise in driving reliability and operational resilience, including platform performance, capacity planning, and incident management
• Experience shaping scalable architectures and driving adoption of best practices, such as service-oriented architecture, microservices, or event-driven architecture
• Skilled at defining technical strategy, setting architectural direction, and guiding engineering teams in making tradeoffs aligned with business goals
• Deep knowledge of backend/platform technologies g. C#/.NET, SQL and cloud infrastructure e.g. AWS, Docker, Terraform at scale
• History of implementing CI/CD, automated testing, and observability frameworks across teams to improve delivery quality and operational resilience

Business & Domain

• Experience in fintech, trading systems, or other highly regulated environments
• Ability to partner effectively with business and product leaders on priorities and tradeoffs
• Strong understanding of how engineering decisions impact revenue, platform stability, and operational risk
• Excellent communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences

Company Culture & Perks

• Topstep is an engaging working environment that ranges from fully remote to hybrid. We foster a culture of collaboration with cameras on during meetings and a robust Slack environment for communication.
• 10 Company-paid Holidays and generous Family Leave. Paid time off is accrued monthly.
• Competitive 401(k) matching, health, dental, and vision insurance is offered for full-time employees
• Vacations are encouraged with a bonus for taking 5 consecutive days. Topstep offers a food and groceries budget and contributes towards health and wellness.

New Hire Base Salary Range

• $230,000 - $295,000
• The compensation offered will take into account the internal compensation structure and may vary depending on the candidate's geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Topstep is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all employees and applicants are valued. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status, in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Interested in the role? Apply today with your resume!