Senior Backend Engineer, Core Trading Systems
About the position Novig is backed by Forerunner Ventures, YC, Lux, Soma, Innospark, Paul Graham, Joe Montana, and founders of Instacart and Dropbox — along with leading angels and operators. We’re building the future of sports prediction markets using real exchange-grade infrastructure. Sports betting is a $300B market dominated by retail sportsbooks with wide spreads, discriminatory practices, latency issues, and a poor user experience. Novig is building a commission-free, peer-to-peer exchange that guarantees users the best lines by letting them play directly against friends or the market itself. We are hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for Core Trading Systems to architect and build our matching engine, market-data pipelines, risk controls, and real-time state machines. This is a high-impact, founding engineering role shaping the core of the Novig platform. You will build and refine the core infrastructure that powers a real-time prediction market: Exchange Infrastructure / Real-Time Systems Design and implement deterministic state machines for matching, settlement, and market-making flows. Architect high-throughput market data ingestion, distribution, and replay systems. Build order gateways, session management, and pre-/at-trade risk checks. Optimize for ultra-low latency, throughput, and correctness guarantees. APIs & Developer Experience Build a developer-first API for algorithmic trading integrations. Create high-reliability endpoints for programmatic and UI client interactions. Collaborate with frontend and product teams to maintain a seamless user experience. Performance, Scale, and Reliability Profile and optimize system hot paths using flamegraphs, tracing, and performance tooling. Collaborate with Platform/SRE to ensure recovery, failover, and observability of real-time systems. Improve the architecture for modularity, stability, and future regulatory requirements. Responsibilities • Build and evolve Novig’s matching engine and real-time trading services. • Design scalable, event-driven systems with strong ordering and idempotency guarantees. • Work closely with trading engineers to implement market microstructure logic. • Expand our product surface via modular backend services. • Develop developer-first APIs enabling external algorithms to trade on Novig. • Contribute to architecture discussions, operational readiness, and production debugging. Requirements • Bachelor’s/Master’s in CS or related technical field. • 4+ years backend engineering experience, ideally in distributed systems, real-time systems, or trading infrastructure. • Strong proficiency in Go, Rust, or C++. • Experience with concurrent programming, event-driven architectures, and relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred). • Understanding of CAP tradeoffs, ordering semantics, and consistency/availability considerations. • Ability to navigate ambiguity and take ownership across large technical surfaces. • Strong collaboration and communication skills. Nice-to-haves • Experience with matching engines, market-making systems, order books, or HFT infrastructure. • Experience with Kafka, Redis, or real-time streaming systems. • Familiarity with financial exchanges or prediction markets. • Interest in sports, betting, and market microstructure. Benefits • 100% health premium coverage, 90% dental & vision • 4% 401(k) match • HSA with $1,080 annual employer contribution • $27/day food or commuter stipend • Flexible PTO • New NYC office, hybrid-friendly Apply tot his job