Senior Backend Engineer, Exchange Core

Job details

Work model

On-site

Salary

$250,000 – $500,000

Location

New York

Company website

www.checkout.com

Hiring context

How this role compares at Polymarket

Polymarket has 77 live roles in MeritLog’s catalog across 10 job families, and 27 of them are in engineering. 55 of those listings publish a pay range, a disclosure rate of 71%.

Counted across the job boards MeritLog tracks, at the time this page was served. Pay comparisons use only listings that publish a complete range in the same currency and period.

What the role asks for

Parsed by MeritLog from the employer’s own posting. The full description follows below.

Job description

ABOUT POLYMARKET 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. ABOUT THE ROLE 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. WHAT YOU’LL DO We’re looking for an experienced backend engineer who enjoys working close to the metal and solving hard distributed systems problems. - 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. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - 4–7+ years of professional backend development experience, with strong proficiency in C/C++ (preferred) or another systems language (Go, Rust, Java). - Solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, concurrency, memory management, and experience building low-latency, high-throughput systems. - Comfortable working on complex systems end-to-end, debugging production issues on Linux, and taking responsibility for correctness and performance. - (Plus) Experience in trading systems, HFT, gaming, telecom, or other latency-sensitive domains - (Plus) Production experience with Kafka, Pulsar, or similar streaming platforms at scale - (Plus) Familiarity with gRPC, Protobuf, ZeroMQ, or similar technologies - (Plus) Experience deploying systems in cloud environments (AWS/GCP) and using containers BENEFITS - Competitive salary & equity - Unlimited PTO - Full Health, Vision, & Dental coverage - 401k match - Hardware setup - new MacBook Pro, big display, & accessories PAY TRANSPARENCY Base salary range: $250,000 to $500,000, plus equity and benefits. This is a good-faith range for the level we're hiring at. Experience varies widely within a title here, so if your expectations fall outside it, reach out anyway. We're always happy to talk it through.