Backend Engineer

Location: Remote Compensation: $100k — $160k USD base, 0.2-0.5% equity Today, if you’re trading onchain, you’re broadcasting your trades to the world before they happen. Sophisticated actors systematically front-run all trades (MEV, stat arb), resulting in most high-value trading activity remaining within centralized exchanges that share all the downsides of the system crypto was meant to replace. At Tristero , we're building the world's first performant decentralized darkpool, where trades are private until they clear, and you maintain full autonomy through the entire trade cycle. We’re looking for a backend engineer ready to work on high-performance, low-latency systems in a distributed, multi-chain environment. You’ll take ownership of substantial components, contribute to production-critical features, and push for performance, reliability, and scalability—while collaborating with senior engineers on architecture and design. What you'll work on High-Performance Matching Engine & Zero-Knowledge Privacy Implement and optimize order matching algorithms with tight latency budgets (<500ms match, <100ms quote gen). Work on data structures for real-time order books. Integrate and refine zero-knowledge proof systems to maintain cryptographic privacy. Cross-Chain Liquidity Orchestration Contribute to adaptive pathfinding algorithms that route across 15+ EVM chains, Solana, and centralized venues. Implement slippage controls, fallback routing, and cross-chain settlement mechanisms. Fault-Tolerant Distributed Architecture Build microservices for market data, execution, and routing. Implement async processing pipelines, WebSocket feeds, and Redis-backed stateful services. Add telemetry, structured logging, and monitoring to ensure operational visibility. What we expect 2–4 years of backend engineering experience delivering production systems. Strong proficiency in at least one backend language (Go, Rust, TypeScript, Python). Experience with API design, relational and in-memory databases, and message queues. Familiarity with distributed systems, concurrency control, and fault-tolerance patterns. Comfortable reading and reasoning about performance profiles, system metrics, and production logs. Interest in blockchain and DeFi—or the ability to rapidly gain deep protocol knowledge. We’ve got unlimited PTO, a full suite of healthcare options, and some swag with your name on it. We foster a high-trust, high-autonomy culture. If you’re looking for a no-nonsense team to build groundbreaking financial products with—Tristero may be the place for you. We're looking forward to hearing from you! If you do not have any direct crypto experience, please make sure to include a brief cover letter that explains why you think you can onboard to a new domain smoothly. This can be very short - we do read these.