Staff Software Engineer – Special Projects @ Chairman Office

Requirements

• You are a driven, positive, self-motivated thinker-doer. You bring the rare mix of deep technical strength and strong day-to-day presence: sharp systems intuition, calm execution under pressure, and a collaborative style that makes people want to build with you.
• You have high engineering horsepower and strong fundamentals (systems thinking, debugging, architecture, performance), while staying practical and outcome-oriented.
• You do what must be done to move the work forward—and you leave things better than you found them: improving coding standards, tests, local dev experience, observability, and dependency health, not just shipping the happy-path feature.
• You hold a clear effort/reward lens: you invest where it compounds, avoid perfectionism for its own sake, and consistently prioritize the outcomes that matter.
• You’re low-ego, high-standards: you raise the quality bar through example, thoughtful reviews, and good taste—without creating friction.
• You communicate clearly, bring calm energy, and help teams stay optimistic and focused when timelines are real and constraints are sharp.
• You’ve likely been a tech lead or engineering manager, and you’re excited to be more hands-on again—still leading through influence, mentoring, and technical direction, but closer to the code and the problem.
• You’re not jaded—you still enjoy the craft, you’re curious, and you’re genuinely excited to learn (Rust, Kraken’s internals, and whatever else the problem demands).
• You treat AI/agents as a force multiplier: you’re already a high-output engineer, and you use agentic tooling to accelerate iteration, improve test coverage, and raise quality—without outsourcing judgment.
• Strong expertise in Rust (preferred) or another systems-level language such as Go, C++, or similar, with the ability to quickly become productive in Rust
• You don’t just bring your experience and perspective—you invest in becoming an expert in the Kraken platform, adopt our practices, and help keep our systems consistent as you evolve and improve them over time.
• Deep experience designing and operating distributed systems in production environments
• Strong understanding of low-level networking, concurrency models, and performance tradeoffs
• Experience building real-time or latency-sensitive systems
• Proven track record of repeatedly shipping complex, high-impact technical systems
• Demonstrated ability to independently own architecture and delivery in ambiguous environments
• Practical experience applying or integrating AI capabilities into backend systems or deep fluency using AI tooling to enhance engineering productivity
• Strong systems thinking. You reason from first principles and care how things work under the hood
• Contributions to high-performance or open-source infrastructure projects
• Kubernetes or Hashicorp stack (Nomad/Consul/Vault) experience
• Experience in high-growth, startup-style engineering teams
• Past experience with crypto or trading related projects
• Full-stack/Swiss Army knife: you know to invest in local developer experience and tooling to make your projects quick to contribute to, you can switch from product ideation to architecture, from code to operations, and from benchmarking to load testing easily.
• 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 knowledgable 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.