Staff Software Engineer – Special Projects @ Chairman Office

Our Krakenites are a world-class team with crypto conviction, united by our desire to discover and unlock the potential of crypto and blockchain technology.

What makes us different?

Kraken is a mission-focused company rooted in crypto values. As a Krakenite, you’ll join us on our mission to accelerate the global adoption of crypto, so that everyone can achieve financial freedom and inclusion. For over a decade, Kraken’s focus on our mission and crypto ethos has attracted many of the most talented crypto experts in the world.

Before you apply, please read the Kraken Culture page to learn more about our internal culture, values, and mission. We also expect candidates to familiarize themselves with the Kraken app. Learn how to create a Kraken account here.

As a fully remote company, we have Krakenites in 70+ countries who speak over 50 languages. Krakenites are industry pioneers who develop premium crypto products for experienced traders, institutions, and newcomers to the space. Kraken is committed to industry-leading security, crypto education, and world-class client support through our products like Kraken Pro, Desktop, Wallet, and Kraken Futures.

Become a Krakenite and build the future of crypto!

In this team, you’ll help expand the Kraken platform by building new backend capabilities and shared primitives that unlock new product experiences. You’ll work in a high-trust, fast-moving environment where projects are often early-stage and ambiguous, including work that’s AI-adjacent and deeply technical, with an emphasis on systems-level thinking and engineering excellence.

You’ll collaborate with senior leadership and cross-functional partners to design and deliver new backend capabilities that interface directly with core platform infrastructure. The team values engineers who care deeply about how things work under the hood while remaining pragmatic and outcome-oriented.

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.

• Architect and ship new backend capabilities that integrate AI-adjacent functionality into Kraken’s core systems

• Design distributed services that meet high standards for reliability, performance, and correctness

• Work on latency-sensitive and real-time system components

• Own end-to-end technical design, from protocol and service boundaries through production deployment

• Leverage modern AI tooling to significantly accelerate development velocity while maintaining engineering rigor

• Collaborate with senior leadership and cross-functional partners on high-impact, technically ambitious initiatives

• Deliver complex systems on ambitious timelines without sacrificing quality

• 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.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind. Whether that’s based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state or local laws. 

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