Engineering Manager - Core Services

Overview

Kraken is a mission-focused company rooted in crypto values. As a Krakenite, you’ll join us on our mission to accelerate the global adoption of crypto so that everyone can achieve financial freedom and inclusion. Over a decade long, Kraken’s focus on mission and crypto ethos has attracted many of the world’s most talented crypto experts.

Backend Core is a team in Kraken’s Core Services organization that builds and owns some of the company’s most critical backend foundations. The team designs, operates, and evolves the building blocks that power products across Kraken, including a high-reliability events platform, the (g)
RPC service mesh connecting API and backend services, and core Rust libraries and frameworks.

As Engineering Manager for Backend Core, you’ll lead the team while working closely with technical leaders to drive direction and delivery. You’ll align priorities with engineering groups, Security, SRE, and leadership, shape API and platform standards, coordinate cross-team projects, and keep foundational services reliable, performant, and easy to build on.

• Lead a strong team that develops and maintains core software for the Kraken backend platform
• Design and implement libraries and microservices in Rust
• Contribute to technical direction in design and review discussions for APIs, distributed systems, and foundational libraries
• Set the standard for high-quality code and lead complex software systems development; using powerful AI tools to your advantage
• Work in cross-functional initiatives that drive API and platform standards across the company

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering
• 2+ years of experience in hands‑on engineering management of a team from 4-8 people
• Experience writing network services or asynchronous code in Rust
• Experience with Kafka, stateful stream processing, and materialized views
• Background in distributed systems, backend infrastructure, or core platform engineering
• Working knowledge of gRPC or comparable RPC systems and the related API schema design
• Proactive and results-oriented mindset with the ability to prioritize tasks
• Excellent and collaborative communication and stakeholder management skills
• Passion for solving complex engineering problems

• Direct experience with Rust in production
• Experience designing or operating event-driven architectures at scale
• A history of software maintenance in open source or company projects

This job is accepting ongoing applications and there is no Final date to receive applications.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Kraken is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate all Krakenites for their diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions and unique perspectives. We hire strictly based on merit, meaning we seek out the candidates with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills considered the most suitable for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don’t fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you’re passionate or knowledgeable about crypto!

As an equal opportunity employer, we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind. Whether that’s based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state or local laws.