Senior Java Software Engineer - Financial Markets

Company Description

Theta Data is a pioneering data company specializing in low-latency APIs for delivering high-speed options and stocks data. Our mission is to empower users with real-time, actionable information so they can make well-informed decisions in dynamic financial markets. With a focus on speed and broad data coverage, Theta Data stands at the forefront of the options data industry by providing essential tools and insights. We are dedicated to equipping professionals with the resources needed to excel in a competitive landscape.

We’re a small, nimble team growing quickly. Our platform handles billions of database requests daily, and we’re just getting started. The complexity of our data problems is real: tick-level options data is among the most intricate financial data to store, index, and serve at scale. We take engineering seriously.

Role Description

We’re hiring seasoned Java Software Engineers steeped in financial market data experience. Java 21 is our primary language, but we also dabble in C++. This is a hands-on coding role with an eye for architecture. We are looking for self-starting engineers who think deeply about system scale, creatively solve problems, and can move forward in high ambiguity.

You’ll join a lean engineering team where your work has a direct, visible impact on the platform and the customers who use it. We have new services to architect, bottlenecks to eliminate, and workflows to redesign from scratch.

Additionally, you’ll support production systems, investigate and resolve bugs, and help keep a platform that customers depend on running smoothly.

What you will work on

• Collaborate with the team and senior technical leadership to design, build, and scale backend services handling billions of requests daily
• Build and optimize the pipelines that ingest, cache, persist, and stream billions of market ticks per day
• Architect new systems and contribute to technical direction
• Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks across the stack

Our Technical Stack

• Java 21 - our core backend services, business logic, API, and thick client
• Python - scripting, tooling
• Apache Tomcat - servlet container
• Java Servlets - HTTP request handling
• PostgreSQL
• ClickHouse
• RedPanda
• gRPC
• AI coding tools (Claude, Gemini, Copilot) - we use them, you should too

Required

• Extensive experience building high-throughput, low-latency, concurrent systems in Java (financial markets, crypto exchanges, gaming, ad-impression, real-time bidding, etc.)
• Experience with low-level network programming (raw sockets/TCP, custom protocol design)
• Experience designing or consuming gRPC/Protobuf-based APIs
• Experience with JVM performance tuning and profiling under heavy load
• Experience with columnar/analytical databases for querying and aggregating large datasets (e.g., ClickHouse)
• Experience with log-based/topic streaming systems for short-term retention and data distribution (e.g., RedPanda, Kafka)
• Solid computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, systems thinking)
• Agentic development

Nice to Have

• PostgreSQL
• ClickHouse
• RedPanda
• Python development experience
• Experience with Apache Tomcat or Java Servlets

Why Theta Data

• Rapid growth: the platform and team are both scaling fast
• Real engineering challenges: data at scale, low-latency systems, complex financial data
• High ownership: a small team means your decisions matter and ship quickly
• Greenfield opportunities: new systems to design, not just legacy to maintain
• Remote-first: work from anywhere
• Direct impact: your work reaches thousands of quants and researchers daily