Exchange Software Engineer
Bitnomial
Location
Chicago
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Bitnomial, Inc.
Compensation
- $150K – $210K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus
About Bitnomial
Bitnomial is building the next generation US-based global derivatives exchange, starting with digital assets and progressively expanding to encompass a full spectrum of commodities worldwide. Bitnomial operates a US CFTC regulated exchange (DCM), clearinghouse (DCO), and brokerage (FCM). Bitnomial offers the Bitcoin Complex comprising physically delivered Bitcoin Futures, Options, Deci Futures, and Hashrate Futures used by brokers, hedge funds, institutions, and trading firms around the world.
Role Overview
Bitnomial is hiring an engineer to design and own core services across the exchange and clearing stack: matching engines, order lifecycle, margin and risk systems, position netting and settlement, market data, and collateral flows. The codebase is Haskell. The environment is low-latency, high-correctness, and directly connected to regulated capital markets. The work is systems design under regulatory, latency, and failure constraints.
This role is designed for two types of candidates: engineers from the trading or prop firm world (typically Java or C++) who want to work in Haskell, and Haskell engineers who want to apply their skills to exchange and clearing infrastructure. Strength in either background is sufficient. Strength in both is exceptional.
Core Requirements
Engineering Fundamentals
Strong software engineering skills in a compiled, statically typed language (Haskell, Java, C++, Scala, OCaml, Rust)
Comfort with concurrent and multithreaded systems
Experience designing systems where correctness and latency both matter
Ability to reason about failure modes, edge cases, and state management
Clear written communication: design documents, technical tradeoffs, and architectural decisions
Trading Systems or Functional Programming (one or both)
Trading systems path: Experience building or operating order execution, risk, margin, settlement, or market data systems, in any language. Understanding of exchange or clearing workflows, position management, or collateral systems.
Haskell path: Production Haskell experience or deep familiarity with typed functional programming (strong type systems, effect management, property-based testing). Willingness to learn trading and clearing domain concepts.
Infrastructure
Linux systems proficiency: debugging, profiling, deployment
Comfort with networked systems: TCP, binary protocols, serialization formats
Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred)
Familiarity with market protocols (FIX, binary protocols) or message systems (Kafka) is a plus
Baseline Expectations
Candidates should be able to:
Own services end-to-end from design through production, including observability and operational runbooks
Debug across application, network, and system layers without waiting for someone else to narrow the problem
Make sound technical decisions independently in ambiguous situations
Operate with the rigor expected when systems handle real capital in regulated markets
Experience with matching engine or OMS internals, real-time risk and margin systems, high-throughput persistence and serialization, or reconciliation and surveillance pipelines is valuable but not required.
If a candidate lacks the fundamental technical baseline described above, the role is not a fit.
Compensation Range: $150K - $210K