Sr. Software Engineer II, Exchange Connectivity (C++)

What you’ll do:

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Sr. Software Engineer II with deep expertise in exchange connectivity and high-performance trading systems. This is a high-impact role focused on interfacing directly with multiple exchanges, handling real-time market data, order routing, and trade processing with low latency and high reliability.

You’ll be part of the Exchange Connectivity team, owning the software that communicates directly with exchanges worldwide.

In this role you will:

• Design, implement, and support exchange connectivity components across multiple asset classes and protocols
• Develop and maintain market data handlers, order gateways, and contract/instrument reference data processors
• Create APIs to expose exchange services to the broader organization via REST, WebSocket, event bus, or other mechanisms
• Collaborate closely with the Trading OMS, FCM, and infrastructure teams
• Optimize for low latency, high throughput, and fault tolerance across all trading and data flows

What you’ll need:

• 8+ years of experience in the trading industry, ideally with C++ or Rust
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
• Proven experience building exchange connectivity and market data systems across multiple venues
• Strong understanding of network programming, multicast UDP, TCP, and asynchronous I/O
• Deep knowledge of trading industry specifications (FIX, SBE, market data formats, etc.)
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to mentor others and drive change across teams
• Experience supporting live trading systems in production — diagnosing connectivity issues, latency anomalies, and failover events
• Strong sense of ownership, with the ability to deliver robust, tested, and observable software in mission-critical environments

Bonus Points for:

• Capital markets experience
• Performance profiling and tuning using perf, VTune, Wireshark, or similar tools to analyze and reduce latency
• Low-latency systems development with deep experience optimizing for performance, throughput, and determinism in production trading environments
• Building and maintaining real-time feed handlers for exchange protocols (ITCH, OUCH, FIX/FAST, CME MDP, Eurex ETI, etc.)
• Familiarity with U.S. and international exchange APIs and connectivity protocols (CME, ICE, Eurex, CBOE, Binance, etc.)
• Expert-level Linux knowledge, including performance tuning, kernel parameters, NUMA, and clock synchronization (PTP)
• Building resilient distributed systems that handle failover, recovery, and state synchronization
• Expertise in concurrency, multi-threading, and asynchronous programming
• Familiarity with IBM MQ for exchange data transfer
• Experience with low-latency networking, kernel bypass, or FPGA acceleration

Compensation:

The salary range for this role will be $140,000-$190,000 USD. In addition, this position will also receive an annual target bonus of 10%. Bonus pay at NinjaTrader is based on individual performance (50%) as well as company/team performance (50%).

Salary and bonus earnings are only two components of the total compensation package offered by NinjaTrader. NinjaTrader offers a 401(k) plan through ADP under which the company will match up to 3.5% of employee contributions. Annual paid time off allowance accrues at a rate of 18 days per year plus seven paid holidays.

Location:

This role is based in Chicago, IL. We are not open to remote candidates for this role.

Hybrid:

For Chicago-based employees, we follow a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday, with remote work on Mondays and Fridays. In addition to these weekly remote days, we offer:

• 20 additional flex remote days annually
• 5 Company Wide Office-Optional weeks tied to major holidays