Sr. Software Engineer II, Exchange Connectivity

What you’ll do:

• Design, implement, and support exchange connectivity components across multiple asset classes and protocols
• Develop and maintain market data handlers, order gateways, and contract/instrument reference data processors
• Create APIs to expose exchange services to the broader organization via REST, WebSocket, event bus, or other mechanisms
• Collaborate closely with the Trading OMS, FCM, and infrastructure teams
• Optimize for low latency, high throughput, and fault tolerance across all trading and data flows

What you’ll need:

• 8+ years of experience in the trading industry, ideally with C++ or Rust
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
• Proven experience building exchange connectivity and market data systems across multiple venues
• Strong understanding of network programming, multicast UDP, TCP, and asynchronous I/O
• Deep knowledge of trading industry specifications (FIX, SBE, market data formats, etc.)
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to mentor others and drive change across teams
• Experience supporting live trading systems in production — diagnosing connectivity issues, latency anomalies, and failover events
• Strong sense of ownership, with the ability to deliver robust, tested, and observable software in mission-critical environments

Bonus Points for:

• Capital markets experience
• Performance profiling and tuning using perf, VTune, Wireshark, or similar tools to analyze and reduce latency
• Low-latency systems development with deep experience optimizing for performance, throughput, and determinism in production trading environments
• Building and maintaining real-time feed handlers for exchange protocols (ITCH, OUCH, FIX/FAST, CME MDP, Eurex ETI, etc.)
• Familiarity with U.S. and international exchange APIs and connectivity protocols (CME, ICE, Eurex, CBOE, Binance, etc.)
• Expert-level Linux knowledge, including performance tuning, kernel parameters, NUMA, and clock synchronization (PTP)
• Building resilient distributed systems that handle failover, recovery, and state synchronization
• Expertise in concurrency, multi-threading, and asynchronous programming
• Familiarity with IBM MQ for exchange data transfer
• Experience with low-latency networking, kernel bypass, or FPGA acceleration

Pay:

The salary range for this role will be $140,000-$190,000 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 401(k) 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.

Location:

This role is based in Chicago, IL. We are not open to remote candidates for this role. 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