Staff Software Engineer Special Projects Chairman Office

📋 Description

• • Join Kraken, a globally recognized leader in the cryptocurrency space, and contribute to building the future of digital finance. We are a mission-focused company driven by crypto values, dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto and empowering individuals with financial freedom and inclusion.
• • As a Staff Software Engineer on the Special Projects team within the Chairman's Office, you will play a pivotal role in expanding Kraken's platform by developing new backend capabilities and shared primitives. These advancements will unlock novel product experiences and push the boundaries of what's possible in the crypto ecosystem.
• • This is a unique opportunity to work in a high-trust, fast-moving environment where projects are often in their early stages and can be ambiguous. You will tackle deeply technical challenges, including those adjacent to Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a strong emphasis on systems-level thinking and engineering excellence.
• • You will collaborate directly with senior leadership and cross-functional partners to architect, design, and deliver critical backend capabilities that interface seamlessly with Kraken's core platform infrastructure.
• • The team thrives on a culture of deep technical curiosity, valuing engineers who possess a profound understanding of how systems operate at a fundamental level, while remaining pragmatic and outcome-oriented in their approach.
• • As an ideal candidate, you are a driven, positive, and self-motivated individual who embodies the 'thinker-doer' mentality. You bring a rare combination of deep technical acumen and a strong, consistent day-to-day presence.
• • You possess sharp systems intuition, demonstrate calm execution under pressure, and foster a collaborative style that inspires others to build alongside you. Your high engineering horsepower and strong fundamentals in systems thinking, debugging, architecture, and performance are complemented by a practical, outcome-focused mindset.
• • You are committed to continuous improvement, going beyond shipping features to enhance coding standards, improve test coverage, optimize the local development experience, bolster observability, and ensure dependency health.
• • You maintain a clear 'effort-reward' lens, investing your energy where it yields compounding returns, avoiding perfectionism for its own sake, and consistently prioritizing the outcomes that truly matter.
• • You operate with low ego and high standards, elevating the quality bar through your example, thoughtful code reviews, and impeccable taste, all while fostering a positive and collaborative environment.
• • Your communication is clear and concise, bringing a calm energy to the team and helping maintain optimism and focus, even when facing ambitious timelines and sharp constraints.
• • You likely have prior experience as a tech lead or engineering manager and are eager to return to a more hands-on coding role, leading through influence, mentorship, and technical direction while staying close to the code and the problem.
• • You are not jaded; you still find joy in the craft of software engineering, maintain a curious mindset, and are genuinely excited to learn new technologies, including Rust, Kraken's internal systems, and whatever else the specific project demands.
• • You view AI agents as a powerful force multiplier. You are already a high-output engineer and will leverage agentic tooling to accelerate iteration, enhance test coverage, and elevate quality without compromising critical judgment.
• • Your responsibilities will include architecting and shipping new backend capabilities that integrate AI-adjacent functionality into Kraken's core systems, designing robust distributed services that meet stringent standards for reliability, performance, and correctness.
• • You will work on critical components of latency-sensitive and real-time systems, taking ownership of end-to-end technical design, from defining protocol and service boundaries to overseeing production deployment.
• • A key aspect of this role involves leveraging modern AI tooling to significantly accelerate development velocity while rigorously maintaining engineering discipline and quality.
• • You will collaborate closely with senior leadership and cross-functional teams on initiatives that are both technically ambitious and have a high impact on Kraken's strategic goals.
• • You will be responsible for delivering complex systems within ambitious timelines, ensuring that quality is never sacrificed.
• • This role offers the chance to work on cutting-edge technology, solve challenging problems, and contribute directly to the growth and innovation of one of the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges.