Lead Software Engineer - Application Security & Architecture

Prospect Markets is hiring a senior engineer to lead technology initiatives across our platform. You'll bring deep application security and software architecture expertise to a team building compliant trading software, with direct responsibility for the systems and standards that make our platform fast, reliable, and secure.
You’ll still ship code and own hard technical problems yourself, but you’ll also set architectural direction, review and shape development plans, and mentor the engineers who execute them. You’ll work closely with the CTO, senior developers, and product leads, with real influence over what we build and how we build it.
What You’ll Do
Lead technology initiatives that enable new products and scale existing ones for speed, performance, reliability, and security.
Own application security across the stack - threat modeling, secure coding practices, vulnerability management, and security reviews of new features and services.
Set and enforce software architecture best practices: service boundaries, API design, data models, and platform scalability decisions.
Design and review development plans, translating business and product requirements into sound technical approaches before work begins.
Lead and mentor developers on architecture, secure coding, and engineering best practices - through code review, design review, and hands-on guidance.
Drive the compliance posture of our trading systems, ensuring engineering practices meet the standards required of regulated financial software (auditability, data integrity, access control, change management).
Build and maintain production-grade backend services (APIs, auth, data, messaging)
Improve reliability, performance, monitoring, and observability across the platform.
Support the evolution of CI/CD pipelines, containerized environments, and cloud infrastructure
Diagnose and resolve complex technical issues in production environments, including security incidents.
Stay current on emerging technologies, security threats, and compliance requirements, and recommend pragmatic adoption.
What We’re Looking For
7+ years of full-stack engineering experience in production environments, with meaningful time spent in a senior or technical leadership capacity.
Demonstrated application security experience - secure SDLC, common vulnerability classes (OWASP Top 10 and beyond), security reviews, and remediation, not just awareness.
Prior experience in a security- or compliance-sensitive domain (fintech, trading, healthcare, or similar regulated environments strongly preferred).
Strong track record designing software architecture for scale - service boundaries, distributed systems, data and caching strategy, and documented technical decision-making.
Experience leading or mentoring other engineers: running design/code reviews, shaping technical standards, and raising the bar for a team.
Experience with containerized systems (Kubernetes), CI/CD, and cloud infrastructure (AWS / DO / GCP).
Solid understanding of APIs, distributed systems, databases, and caching layers (Redis, Postgres).
Comfortable owning outcomes - technical, security, and organizational - not just tickets.
experience with real-time/low-latency systems, WebSockets, microservices, trading or market-data infrastructure, or regulatory frameworks relevant to trading platforms (e.G., SOC 2, FINRA, MiFID).
Why Join Us
Direct influence over the architecture, security posture, and engineering standards of a platform used by real trading customers in a fast-growing space.
A seat at the table on technical direction - this role shapes how the platform is built, not just what gets built.
Senior, high-autonomy engineering culture with zero bureaucracy - high trust, high ownership.
Competitive compensation + equity (stock options).
Work directly with experienced founders and a small, elite dev team.
The chance to build the security and architectural foundation a compliant trading platform is built on - not join one that already exists.
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