Senior Frontend Engineer - Trading API

Alpaca

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Location: USA, Canada, Europe
Job Type: full-time
Salary: Unknown
Posted: April 19, 2026

Job Description

Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Our recent Series D funding round brought our total investment to over $320 million, fueling our ambitious vision.

Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 9 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.

Alpaca is proudly backed by top-tier global investors, including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:

We're a dynamic team of 230+ globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond!

We're searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca's rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.

Your Role:

As a Senior Frontend Engineer, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining frontend applications that form the foundation of user experience at Alpaca and empower millions of users who trade billions of dollars worth of assets.

As part of a focused and specialized engineering team, you will be responsible for the user experience and product development for Trading API customers, encompassing both the frontend trading dashboards and backend systems that power Trading API product features like elite, high-yield cash, paper accounts, and more. Working closely with our users and internal stakeholders, we specialize in delivering high-quality end-to-end solutions across the full suite of frontend and backend systems at Alpaca.

We’re looking for someone who brings deep frontend expertise, enjoys mentoring others, and thrives in a culture of curiosity and continuous improvement. Working collaboratively in a cross-functional team with a keen attention to detail, you’ll build elegant and seamless user experiences with a focus on polish, performance, responsiveness, and accessibility.

Things You Get To Do:

Play a pivotal role in architecting and developing web and mobile applications that push the boundaries of technology
Work closely with cross-functional teams to create responsive, performant, and intuitive user interfaces that delight our customers
Own the delivery of high-visibility features/projects, from design to deployment
Mentor peers and influence the technical strategy of our company

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

5+ years of experience in frontend development with TypeScript/React
3+ years of experience in mobile application development for Android and iOS
2+ years of experience using a modern systems programming language like Golang, C++, or Rust
Excellent communication and collaboration skills
Ability to translate product mockups and designs into fully realized user interfaces
Proficient in HTML and CSS frameworks such as TailwindCSS
Passionate about creating intuitive and performance user interfaces
Experience with REST APIs and WebSockets best practices
Experience with relational databases and SQL
Track record of setting or influencing frontend best practices
Attention to detail and an appreciation for design aesthetics

Who You Might Be (Nice-to-Haves):

Algo trading experience (either professional or personal)

Experience with major cloud platforms (we primarily use GCP)

Experience or understanding of financial markets
Experience working at a startup
Experience working remotely

How We Take Care of You:

Competitive Salary & Stock Options
Health Benefits
New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card

Alpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.

🎯 Who is this job for?

This role fits a Senior Frontend Engineer with strong full-stack exposure, especially in fintech or trading-related products. You need advanced skills in React, TypeScript, mobile development (iOS/Android), plus experience with backend/system languages (Go, Rust, C++) and real-time data handling via APIs and WebSockets. The candidate should be comfortable building trading dashboards, working with financial data, and owning end-to-end feature delivery while mentoring others and shaping frontend architecture.

💬 Potential Interview Questions

How would you design a high-performance trading dashboard that handles real-time market data updates?
I would use WebSockets for real-time data streaming, normalize incoming data, and minimize re-renders with memoization and efficient state updates. Virtualization and selective subscriptions help keep performance stable under high-frequency updates.
What are best practices for handling WebSocket connections in a React application?
Encapsulate WebSocket logic in custom hooks or services, handle reconnection and backoff strategies, and ensure proper cleanup to avoid memory leaks. State updates should be throttled or batched to prevent UI overload.
How would you ensure numerical accuracy and precision when displaying financial data in the frontend?
Avoid floating-point errors by using libraries or precise formatting strategies, and never rely on UI calculations for critical values. Data consistency should always be validated against backend responses.
How do you approach performance optimization in a React + TypeScript application used for trading?
I focus on minimizing re-renders, optimizing component structure, using memoization, and splitting bundles. Profiling tools help identify bottlenecks, especially under real-time data load.
What considerations are important when building mobile trading applications for iOS and Android?
Responsiveness, touch interactions, and performance are critical, along with handling intermittent connectivity. I also ensure consistent UX across platforms while respecting native behavior patterns.
How would you design a system that integrates REST APIs and WebSockets in the same application?
Use REST for initial data fetching and mutations, and WebSockets for live updates. Synchronization logic ensures that real-time updates don’t conflict with cached or in-flight data.
What frontend challenges are unique to financial or trading platforms?
Handling real-time data, ensuring accuracy, dealing with latency, and maintaining a responsive UI under heavy load are key challenges. UX clarity is also critical due to high-stakes user decisions.
How would you approach building a scalable and maintainable frontend architecture for a fintech product?
I would enforce clear separation of concerns, modular design, shared components, and strong typing. Consistent patterns for data fetching, state management, and error handling are essential.
How do you ensure accessibility and usability in complex dashboards with dense data?
Use clear visual hierarchy, keyboard navigation, ARIA roles, and responsive layouts. I also test with real users and accessibility tools to ensure usability across different scenarios.
How does your backend knowledge (e.g., Go, Rust, or C++) influence your frontend engineering decisions?
It helps me better understand API performance, concurrency, and data flow, allowing me to design more efficient frontend interactions. I can also collaborate more effectively with backend teams and optimize end-to-end performance.

📋 Job Summary

Alpaca is a well-funded U.S.-based brokerage infrastructure company providing institutional-grade APIs for trading stocks, crypto, and more, serving 9M+ accounts across 40+ countries. They are hiring a Senior Frontend Engineer to build and scale high-performance trading dashboards and API-driven interfaces using React, TypeScript, TailwindCSS, and systems languages like Go or Rust, with exposure to mobile development and real-time data systems. This fully remote role (North America & Europe) offers competitive salary, equity, and strong benefits. It’s a great opportunity to shape user experiences in a fast-growing fintech company powering global trading, with real impact at scale and a strong engineering culture.