Disclaimer: Please be advised that the most accurate and up-to-date information about our open roles—including job descriptions, compensation, and benefits—can only be guaranteed on our official job board. For the latest listings and details, please visit: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/ninjatrader.
JOIN US ON OUR MISSION TO BECOME THE #1 RETAIL TRADING PLATFORM IN THE WORLD
Welcome to the dynamic world of NinjaTrader! As an industry-leading trading platform and futures broker, we're empowering traders to take control of their financial destiny. How do we do it? We provide cutting-edge products and services that enhance the trading journey. Whether a seasoned pro or just starting out, NinjaTrader equips traders with award-winning software and brokerage services to navigate the world's leading financial markets with confidence.
Our growth story is nothing short of exhilarating. Since 2003, NinjaTrader has been dedicated to understanding and supporting traders on their journey toward trading triumph. Through those efforts, our user base has grown to over 2 million users and we have become the number one rated futures brokerage worldwide.
But we're not stopping there. We're constantly evolving, pushing boundaries, and modernizing the futures industry. Our commitment to innovation means users will always have access to dynamic tools, real-time support, and a community of like-minded traders.
So, why work at NinjaTrader? Here, you're not just part of a team; you're part of a movement. We empower employees to reach new heights in their careers by providing a dynamic culture focused on social connection, professional development, and employee recognition initiatives. Sounds too good to be true? Take it from our employees.
Join us as we redefine what's possible in trading, advocate for our customers, and continue our journey toward becoming the world's top retail-focused trading platform in the world.
As a Sr. Database Reliability Engineer II, you will help architect, evolve, and optimize the data platform powering NinjaTrader's core trading applications. This is not a traditional Database Administrator (DBA) role. We're looking for a software engineer with deep MySQL/Postgres expertise who enjoys solving complex data challenges while remaining actively involved in software development.
You'll partner closely with software engineers, architects, and platform teams to improve database performance, evolve our data architecture, build developer tooling, and establish engineering best practices that enable our platform to continue scaling. You'll play a key role in shaping the future direction of our data platform by driving initiatives that improve scalability, resiliency, developer productivity, and operational excellence.
This role is ideal for someone who has spent their career building production software and naturally became the database expert responsible for solving performance bottlenecks, designing scalable schemas, and improving application reliability.
In this role you will:
- Design and evolve MySQL schemas supporting high-volume transactional workloads
- Define and drive improvements to NinjaTrader's data platform architecture, including online schema changes, zero/low-downtime database migrations, blue/green deployments, and scalability initiatives that support long-term platform growth.
- Analyze and optimize SQL queries, indexes, and execution plans to improve application performance
- Develop production-quality software that improves our persistence layer, developer tooling, and data platform capabilities
- Design scalable data models that balance performance, maintainability, and long-term growth
- Build reusable libraries, frameworks, and tooling that simplify data access and improve developer productivity across engineering teams
- Lead database performance tuning initiatives across applications and services
- Drive modernization initiatives for database architecture, deployment processes, and operational reliability
- Design and implement safe, repeatable database migration strategies supporting continuous delivery
- Investigate and resolve complex production issues involving application performance, database behavior, locking, concurrency, and data integrity
- Establish engineering standards and best practices for schema design, indexing, SQL development, database migrations, and data access patterns
- Partner with Platform Engineering to improve database monitoring, backup strategies, disaster recovery, and operational resilience
- Leverage Google Cloud Platform services, including Cloud SQL, Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, and related tooling, to improve the reliability, scalability, and observability of our data platform
- Mentor engineers on data modeling, SQL optimization, MySQL best practices, and application performance optimization
- Lead technical design discussions and architecture reviews related to database-backed applications
- Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend solutions that improve platform scalability, maintainability, and engineering efficiency
- Serve as a technical leader and trusted advisor for database architecture, application performance, and data platform best practices
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Strong experience building backend applications using Java, C#, Go, Python, Kotlin, Scala, or similar modern programming languages
- Expert-level experience with MySQL in large-scale production environments
- Deep understanding of:
- SQL optimization
- Query execution plans
- Indexing strategies
- Transactions and isolation levels
- Locking and concurrency
- Schema design and normalization
- Replication and high availability
- Experience designing scalable database schemas for high-volume transactional applications
- Experience troubleshooting complex application and database performance issues
- Experience implementing database migration strategies supporting continuous delivery
- Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, and engineering best practices
- Experience leading technical initiatives and influencing architectural decisions across engineering teams
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers and cross-functional stakeholders
- Passion for improving developer productivity by building automation, developer tooling, database testing frameworks, performance benchmarking harnesses, and engineering best practices.
- Experience building and operating applications on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- Experience with Cloud SQL for MySQL
- Experience using Google Cloud services such as Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, Secret Manager, Cloud Build, or Cloud Deploy
- Experience supporting financial services, trading platforms, or other high-throughput transactional systems
- Experience working in startup or high-growth engineering environments where engineers owned both application development and database performance
- Experience improving developer productivity through tooling and automation
- Experience designing highly available, fault-tolerant distributed systems
- Experience implementing observability solutions, performance monitoring, and database telemetry
- Experience leveraging AI/ML tools or technologies to improve software development, operational efficiency, or engineering productivity
Compensation:
The salary range for this role will be $130,000.00 - $180,000.00 USD. In addition, this position will also receive an annual target bonus of 10%. Bonus pay at NinjaTrader is based on individual performance (50%) as well as company/team performance (50%).
Salary and bonus earnings are only two components of the total compensation package offered by NinjaTrader. NinjaTrader offers a 401K plan through ADP under which the company will match up to 3.5% of employee contributions. Annual paid time off allowance accrues at a rate of 18 days per year plus seven paid holidays.
All offered compensation will be based on assessed experience and is subject to change at the offer stage.
Location:
This role is based in Chicago, IL. *There may be remote flexibility for exceptional candidates in the following states: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington DC, Wisconsin.
Hybrid:
For Chicago-based employees, we follow a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday, with remote work on Mondays and Fridays. In addition to these weekly remote days, we offer:
- 20 additional flex remote days annually
- 5 Company Wide Office-Optional weeks tied to major holidays
Our Core Benefits Include:
- Generous PTO
- 7 Paid Holidays Annually + 5 Conditional Holidays Annually
- 1 Service Day Annually
- 401k with 3.5% Company Match
- Paid Parental Bonding Leave
- Health, Vision, Dental Coverage
- Life and Disability Insurance Covered 100% by NinjaTrader
We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Backend application development experience with Java, C#, Go, Python, Kotlin, Scala, or similar modern programming languages
- Expert-level MySQL experience in large-scale production environments
- Strong knowledge of SQL optimization, query execution plans, indexing, transactions, isolation levels, locking, concurrency, schema design, normalization, replication, and high availability
- Experience designing scalable database schemas for high-volume transactional applications
- Experience troubleshooting complex application and database performance issues
- Experience implementing database migration strategies supporting continuous delivery
- Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, and engineering best practices
- Experience leading technical initiatives and influencing architectural decisions across engineering teams
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills
- Experience building developer tooling, automation, database testing frameworks, performance benchmarking harnesses, or engineering best practices
- Experience building and operating applications on Google Cloud Platform
- Experience with Cloud SQL for MySQL
- Experience with Google Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, Secret Manager, Cloud Build, or Cloud Deploy
- Experience supporting financial services, trading platforms, or high-throughput transactional systems
- Experience designing highly available, fault-tolerant distributed systems
- Experience with observability solutions, performance monitoring, and database telemetry
- Experience using AI or machine learning tools to improve software development or operational efficiency
What the Team is Saying
NinjaTrader Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Core coverage includes medical, dental, and vision alongside mental‑health resources, with company‑paid life and disability insurance. An Employee Assistance Program and FSA options round out a robust health and protection package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Generous PTO, paid holidays, and even volunteer time are highlighted, with some postings specifying substantial annual accruals. Hybrid/remote options further support time‑off flexibility across roles.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Commuter benefits, office snacks, wellness programs, a fitness stipend, and access to an onsite gym are called out as part of the package. These extras complement core benefits and support day‑to‑day wellbeing.
NinjaTrader Insights
What We Do
NinjaTrader's engineering, product, and operations teams build for nearly 4 million futures traders worldwide. Real users, real markets, real confidence in the tech behind every trade. We've been at this since 2003 — launching our own brokerage in 2014 and our FCM in 2021 — and we know what scale looks like in this category. In 2025, NinjaTrader joined Kraken and is now part of Payward, Inc., a unified financial infrastructure company that includes Kraken, NinjaTrader, and a growing set of related products and services. NinjaTrader operates independently within Payward, and we're building from the strongest position in our history. Our Purpose — to build better futures for all traders — is also a hiring filter. We hire people who genuinely care about the trader experience, whether or not they trade themselves. That care shows up everywhere: in product decisions, customer support, how we run our daily livestream, and how compliance reviews every promotional asset before it goes out. Our HQ is in the Loop, overlooking the Chicago River. It's a deliberate space designed for the kind of work we do, with collaboration zones, focus rooms, social areas, and reservable desks for remote employees to use when they're in town. Our hybrid schedule is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in office, plus 20 additional work-from-home flex days per year and up to 5 company-wide office-optional weeks. NinjaTrader has grown to over 430 employees, and nearly 40% of the team works fully remote across 22+ states — on the same squads, same projects, same calls as their Chicago colleagues. We're Great Place To Work Certified™, and in 2026 we were named to the Fortune Best Workplaces in Chicago™ list. NinjaTrader was recognized as one of the 2026 Fortune Best Workplaces in Chicago, an award determined entirely by employee feedback through the Great Place To Work® Trust Index™ survey. NinjaTrader paid no application fee to participate. Futures trading involves substantial risk and is not suitable for everyone. View Disclosures: ninjatrader.com/disclosures/
Why Work With Us
Our Purpose — to build better futures for all traders — is also a hiring filter. We hire people who genuinely care about the trader experience, whether or not they trade themselves. Nearly 4 million traders count on the work we ship. Over 17% of the company was promoted in 2025. Better futures start here.
Gallery
NinjaTrader Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Chicago-based employees follow a hybrid schedule: In-office Tuesday – Thursday, remote on Mondays and Fridays. In addition to these weekly remote days, we offer: 20 flex remote days annually 6 company-wide office-optional weeks
