Rust Engineer - Platform Trading

Rust Engineer – Platform Trading

Keyrock — City of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Since our beginnings in 2017, we've grown to be a leading change‑maker in the digital asset space. We are trading on more than 80 exchanges, and working with a wide array of asset issuers. As a well‑established market maker, our services span market making, options trading, high‑frequency trading, OTC, and DeFi trading desks as well as digital asset management. We are pioneers in adopting Rust for algorithmic trading and champions of its use in the industry.

As a Platform Backend Engineer (Rust), you will drive the development and maintenance of the backoffice and trading data platform systems at the core of our organisation. We are looking for a hands‑on engineer experienced in building scalable, resilient, and high‑performance systems and eager to own the technical implementation of complex infrastructure.

• Design, build, and maintain high‑performance backend services and APIs using Rust, ensuring low latency and high availability for critical trading data platforms.
• Apply strong systems engineering fundamentals: concurrency, memory management, networking, serialization, and observability; tune and profile performance in real‑world systems.
• Create seamless integrations between live trading operations (exchanges/DeFi) and backoffice systems, automating workflows.
• Deploy and manage services in a cloud‑native environment, leveraging AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform (IaC).
• Maintain Git Ops‑driven workflows, ensuring robust CI/CD pipelines and implementing deep system observability (logging, metrics, tracing).
• Optimize data storage and retrieval strategies (SQL/No
  
  SQL) in high‑volume financial environments.
• Engineer solutions with a “Security‑First” mindset, ensuring strict compliance standards and secure handling of sensitive financial data.
• Collaborate with product managers, risk teams, and other engineers to translate complex business requirements into reliable technical specifications.
• Participate in code reviews, contribute to architectural discussions, and mentor fellow engineers.
• Continuously refine the platform’s capabilities by staying updated on emerging trends in Rust, cloud infrastructure, and blockchain technologies.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Proven experience building and maintaining data‑intensive, large‑scale, high‑performance trading data platforms.
• Strong expertise in Rust (or C++), Python, and Type Script for system development and automation.
• Good understanding of data engineering principles: data modeling, ETL pipelines, and stream processing.
• Experience with financial services data workflows: trading, middle‑office, and back‑office operations.
• Extensive experience in cloud‑native architectures, with proficiency in AWS.
• Proficiency in Git Ops tools and methodologies for infrastructure automation and deployment.
• Strong background in Dev Sec Fin Ops : ensuring compliance, security, and cost efficiency across the lifecycle.
• Hands‑on experience with CI/CD pipelines, IaC, and monitoring tools.

We value self‑awareness and powerful communication skills. We seek fiercely passionate people who understand themselves and their career goals, and who act with ownership and deliver solid, scalable outcomes.

• Competitive salary package.
• Autonomy in time management through flexible working hours and remote work.
• Freedom to create your own entrepreneurial experience as part of a team searching for excellence.
• Positive, collaborative work environment with merit‑based hiring, reward, and promotion.
• Prerequisite background checks for all potential employees.

• Seniority Level: Mid‑Senior level
• Employment Type:
  
  Full‑time
• Job Function:
  Engineering and Information Technology