Requirements

• 6+ years of backend engineering experience, with deep Rust proficiency across network services, asynchronous code, and distributed systems design (RPC protocols, Kafka, event-driven architectures)
• A track record of owning systems, not just features. You've made architectural decisions in production, lived with the consequences, and can explain the tradeoffs you'd make differently now
• Product engineering mindset. You've shipped features from problem → implementation → launch → user impact, with deep understanding of customer experience and product metrics, and you've influenced what got built and what got cut
• Demonstrated impact through others: mentoring, design review, technical writing, or setting standards that changed how a team worked
• Experience driving work that spans teams or orgs, where the hard part was alignment and sequencing as much as the code
• AI-first development approach where AI is already meaningfully incorporated into your workflow; you actively use AI for coding, understanding unfamiliar codebases, crossing technical boundaries, and validating implementations
• Ownership mindset with collaborative spirit. You personally drive features end-to-end, work across backend/frontend boundaries, and operate outside technical silos
• Openness to how the engineering profession is evolving because of AI, prioritizing shipping valuable products over manual code writing

Nice to Haves

• Full-stack experience including React/TypeScript or other frontend frameworks — valuable for demonstrating cross-boundary collaboration mindset
• Cryptocurrency or blockchain domain knowledge
• Experience building and scaling products at consumer-focused technology companies, ideally at meaningful user scale
• Experience introducing AI tooling or workflows to an engineering team

What You'll Be Doing

• Own the architecture and delivery of customer-facing Rust backend services powering trading, payments, and crypto experiences — making the design calls on systems that will outlive the feature you built them for
• Take ambiguous, multi-quarter problems from "we think this matters" to shipped and measured, breaking them down so the rest of the team can move in parallel with you
• Partner with product leadership to shape the roadmap for a product area, not just execute against it. You'll bring engineering insight that changes what gets built, and own the outcomes and metrics that follow
• Drive initiatives that cross team boundaries — Kraken's trading infrastructure, platform, and other product teams — building the relationships and technical alignment needed to land them
• Multiply the team: mentor mid-level engineers, review designs before code exists, unblock people quickly, and leave behind patterns and standards that make the next feature easier than the last

Perks and Benefits

• Opportunity to work with a globally accessible financial infrastructure platform
• Potential for mentorship opportunities
• Participate in shaping the future of open finance