Principal Engineer - Trading Core

Join us as a Principal Engineer – Trading Core and take technical ownership of the heart of Pepperstone's trading platform. Our Java-based trading engine powers order management, pricing, market data, risk management and client APIs—processing real client orders and funds in real time. You'll define the technical direction for a mission-critical, regulated platform, driving its evolution towards a more scalable and resilient architecture while keeping a live trading system running 24/7. As a senior individual contributor, you'll lead through architecture, design and code—not people management—setting engineering standards, solving complex technical challenges and helping shape the future of Pepperstone's trading platform.

Responsibilities

Architecture ownership: Define the target-state architecture for the trading backend and lead a pragmatic, low-risk evolution toward more modular, independently deployable, and horizontally scalable services; Resilience & scale: Strengthen the platform’s ability to scale and fail over safely, making capacity and deployment changes predictable, validated, and reversible; Execution quality & latency: Ensure critical paths – risk evaluation, stop-out / close-out, margin, and order execution – behave correctly and with predictable latency, including under peak load and high-volatility market events; Engineering standards: Establish patterns, performance budgets, observability, and testing practices for a real-time trading system, and mentor senior engineers; Technical leadership: Lead through code and design – write reference implementations, run the hardest investigations, and turn incident learnings into durable architecture; Cross-functional partnership: Work closely with SRE/infra, risk, product, pricing, compliance, and the client-facing teams (web, mobile, partner APIs) whose contracts depend on the core

Requirements

Deep expertise building trading-core or execution-engine backends within a broker, exchange or trading venue; Expert-level Java experience developing high-throughput, low-latency concurrent systems; Strong hands-on knowledge of trading platform risk management, margin calculations, order execution and real-time financial processing; Experience designing scalable distributed systems with strong resilience, messaging and failover capabilities; A proven track record of modernising complex production systems while maintaining availability and stability; Strong understanding of leveraged trading products, particularly CFDs or related derivatives

Nice to have

Experience extending trading platforms with new derivative products or trading functionality; Experience with event-driven architectures and real-time market data distribution; Familiarity with FIX protocol and multi-asset trading platforms; Previous experience within a retail trading, CFD brokerage or trading platform environment

Benefits

Competitive salary structure including company bonus scheme; Flexible and hybrid working; Remote working option - work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year; 10 days of Company paid sick leave annually; 21 days of paid vacation within the first year of employment, increasing to 25 days after one year; 3 paid volunteering days per year & Workplace Giving Program; Comprehensive medical insurance with coverage for your healthcare needs; Pension fund; Employee referral bonuses for referring top talent to the company; Ongoing personal development & learning opportunities; Periodic recognition and reward programs for outstanding performance and achievements; Frequent events and celebrations; Genuinely collaborative and friendly culture; Employee Assistance Program & Wellbeing Initiatives; Convenient and cozy office located near the Limassol Municipal Garden