Job Openings
Backend Software Engineer — Rust & Real-Time Crypto Trading
About the job Backend Software Engineer — Rust & Real-Time Crypto Trading
Backend Software Engineer — Rust & Real-Time Crypto Trading
Company: HireNow Staffing (Direct Placement Partner)
Location: New York, New York
Employment: Full-Time | Direct Hire
Work Arrangement: Onsite, five days per week
Base Salary: $185,000–$300,000 annually
Equity: Competitive equity package
Visa Sponsorship: Not available
HireNow Snapshot
HireNow Staffing is recruiting a backend engineer with meaningful production Rust experience to help build the infrastructure behind a real-time crypto trading platform.
This opportunity is designed for an engineer who understands asynchronous systems, cares about performance, and has a demonstrable interest in trading and financial markets. You will work on risk engines, live market data, distributed state coordination, and APIs where millisecond-level response times matter.
The hiring company is a small startup building a unified trading experience across multiple crypto venues and products. Engineers work closely with founders and senior technical colleagues; with significant ownership of the systems, they build.
HireNow Staffing is acting as a direct placement partner.
HireNow Package
Annual Base Salary
- $185,000–$300,000, based on qualifications and experience
Equity
- Competitive equity package
- Grant details and vesting terms to be discussed during the hiring process
Employment and Location
- Full-time, direct-hire position
- New York City office
- Onsite attendance required five days per week
- Remote and hybrid arrangements are not available for this opening
Work Authorization and Relocation
- The supplied employer criteria specify U.S. citizens or Green Card holders
- Current or future visa sponsorship is not available
- Relocation assistance has not been confirmed
Key Responsibilities
Risk and Trading Infrastructure
- Build and maintain risk and liquidation engines that support capital efficiency in volatile markets.
- Process live market data and coordinate time-sensitive actions across trading venues.
- Develop reliable backend services for real-time, high-throughput trading workflows.
Distributed Systems and Blockchain
- Design and implement blockchain state machines supporting trading, settlement, and risk operations.
- Maintain consistent state across asynchronous processes using voting, consensus, and coordination mechanisms.
- Address concurrency, reliability, and performance challenges across distributed services.
APIs and Performance
- Build high-performance REST and WebSocket APIs with millisecond-level response times.
- Manage WebSocket streams and other real-time data workflows.
- Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks.
- Collaborate with a small engineering team to deliver and improve production systems.
Required Qualifications
- 2–4 years of relevant backend software engineering experience
- Meaningful, hands-on production Rust experience
- Asynchronous programming experience with Tokio or directly comparable Rust-based systems
- Experience building real-time, high-throughput backend services
- Experience with low-latency or trading systems
- Experience with multiple database types, such as relational, time-series, or key-value databases
- Meaningful startup experience
- Relevant experience in fintech, crypto, trading, high-frequency trading, or blockchain
- Demonstrable interest in trading and financial markets
- Meaningful personal technical projects, particularly in Rust or C
- Strong backend and systems-engineering fundamentals
- Willingness to work onsite in New York City five days per week
- Ability to meet the employer's stated work-authorization requirements without current or future sponsorship
Production Rust is essential. General backend experience or proficiency in another systems language does not replace this requirement.
Preferred Qualifications
No separate optional qualifications were specified. Particularly strong evidence of fit includes:
- Direct ownership of production Rust services
- Experience with distributed state consistency and coordination
- REST and WebSocket API development
- Measurable improvements to system latency, throughput, or reliability
- Personal Rust or C projects demonstrating technical depth
- Experience delivering critical infrastructure within a small startup team
Technical Environment
Rust, Tokio, asynchronous programming, distributed systems, blockchain, REST APIs, WebSocket APIs, Docker, low-latency services, real-time data processing, and relational, time-series, and key-value databases.
HireNow Checklist
HireNow Staffing is seeking a hands-on backend engineer with production Rust expertise and relevant trading or financial-technology experience. Candidates should be prepared to:
- Explain what they personally built in Rust and how it operated in production.
- Describe their use of asynchronous programming and concurrency.
- Discuss real-time data streams, throughput requirements, and latency constraints.
- Identify the database technologies they used and why.
- Explain their experience with trading, fintech, crypto, HFT, or blockchain.
- Share meaningful personal projects and their technical contributions.
- Demonstrate successful work in a startup environment.
- Confirm five-day onsite availability in New York City.
- Confirm work authorization, compensation expectations, and potential start date.
- Explain employment transitions and demonstrate professional follow-through.
HireNow Standout Candidates
Standout candidates can move beyond naming technologies and explain their engineering decisions: how a service handled concurrent events, where latency came from, how failures were managed, and what changed after an optimization.
The strongest applicants will combine production Rust experience with curiosity about financial markets, substantive personal projects, and enthusiasm for building alongside a small team. This role is best suited to someone who wants to remain close to the code and take ownership of difficult backend problems.
HireNow Disqualifiers
- No meaningful production Rust experience
- No relevant asynchronous programming experience
- Lack of real-time, high-throughput, low-latency, or trading-systems experience
- No relevant fintech, crypto, trading, HFT, or blockchain background
- Primarily frontend or mobile experience without the required backend depth
- No meaningful startup experience
- Preference for remote or hybrid work
- Recent experience centered on executive leadership or people management rather than hands-on engineering
- Need for current or future visa sponsorship
- Failure to meet the employer's stated work-authorization criteria
- Frequent, unexplained job changes; jumpy résumés are not accepted
Work Environment
This is a collaborative, in-person startup environment with direct access to founders and senior engineers. The company seeks engineers who are motivated by challenging systems work, open to feedback, and comfortable with rapidly changing priorities.
The role requires five days per week in the New York City office. Team members sometimes choose to collaborate on weekends; weekend work has not been stated as mandatory.
Interview Process
The employer aims to complete the process within approximately 14 days, subject to scheduling.
- Introductory screen — 30 minutes: Background, experience, and interest
- CTO introduction — 30 minutes: Company, technical environment, and role
- Two technical interviews — 60 minutes each: Rust, asynchronous programming, coding, and systems knowledge
- Investor conversation — 45 minutes: Opportunity to ask questions and evaluate the company
- Final behavioral interview — 30 minutes: Working style, motivation, and fit