Senior Software Engineer – Rust – Core Services

About the role

Join the Core Engineering team at Payward, the company behind Kraken, to design and build high‑performance Rust services that power a global crypto trading platform. You will focus on correctness, security, and long‑term maintainability of critical infrastructure.

Key responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain robust Rust services and foundational libraries for Kraken’s core infrastructure.
• Write reusable, testable, and highly efficient code optimized for scale, observability, and operational resilience.
• Collaborate on large‑scale distributed system architecture, shaping low‑latency, fault‑tolerant services that support global trading and internal platforms.
• Work alongside hundreds of experienced Rust engineers, contributing to a high‑bar engineering culture grounded in ownership and craftsmanship.

Required profile

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with a focus on building and scaling shared systems and internal platforms.
• Security‑first mindset when designing systems to ensure robustness.
• Ability to autonomously debug issues across the stack (OS, network, application).
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, RPC protocols, Kafka, and event‑driven architectures.
• Proven experience collaborating with product teams to gather requirements and deliver end‑to‑end owned solutions.

Required skills

• Rust (including asynchronous programming and network services).
• Distributed systems design and implementation.
• Kafka and event‑driven system development.
• RPC protocol implementation.
• Security‑focused system architecture.