Senior Backend Engineer, US Exchange

Polymarket

3 months
New York Competitive salary & equity
GCP Rust Security Algorithms Distributed Systems C/C++ APIs Data Pipelines Fintech Kafka AWS Engineering Full-time Backend Java Linux HFT Trading Systems Go Senior Scalability Protobuf gRPC On-site Backend Engineering Concurrency Data Structures Debugging Reliability Containers Performance Optimization Code Review Prediction Market Low-latency Systems High-throughput Systems Memory Management Pulsar RabbitMQ Event-Driven Systems ZeroMQ Architectural Design
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Polymarket is the world’s largest prediction market platform. We enable individuals to express views on real-world events by trading on outcomes across politics, economics, sports, culture, and current affairs. Built as a peer-to-peer marketplace with no centralized “house,” Polymarket aggregates diverse opinions into transparent, market-based probabilities that reflect collective expectations about the future. We’re growing fast: both in volume ($21B traded in 2025) and in adoption as an alternative news source. Our ambition is to become a ubiquitous beacon of truth in global media, powered by fast, reliable, and deeply technical market infrastructure.Polymarket is looking for a backend engineer to help build and scale the core exchange infrastructure that powers our markets. This role is focused on high-performance, low-latency backend systems that must be correct, fast, and resilient under real-world trading load. You’ll be a core individual contributor working with other senior engineers to design, implement, and optimize the systems that sit at the heart of Polymarket’s exchange. This is a high-ownership role with minimal bureaucracy and a strong bias toward execution. We’re looking for an experienced backend engineer who enjoys working close to the metal and solving hard distributed systems problems. Responsibilities include: Build the exchange backend: Design and implement scalable, low-latency backend services that power Polymarket’s exchange, using C/C++ or other performance-oriented systems languages (Go, Rust, Java). Optimize for performance & scale: Profile, tune, and debug systems with a focus on latency, throughput, memory usage, and correctness in production. Design distributed systems: Build and operate robust APIs, data pipelines, and event-driven systems using messaging and streaming platforms (Kafka, Pulsar, RabbitMQ). Own reliability & operations: Reinforce security, availability, performance, and scalability across backend systems, and participate in diagnosing and resolving production issues. Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with engineers across product, infra, and data to ensure tight integration between the exchange and the broader platform. Contribute to code quality: Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and architectural decisions to maintain a high bar for engineering excellence.