Chicago, Illinois
Software Engineer Job Opening in Chicago, Illinois - What do you want out of life?
"Happiness"? What is happiness? Isn't happiness the emotional state which follows getting some of what you want out of life? Is "happiness" a circular non-answer; the kind which we use to stop ourselves from asking dangerous questions?
"Friendship"? What kind? Do a smile and a nod as you pass in the office constitute a gesture of friendship? Is it enough to know a person's favorite sports teams? Is it too much to know what they want out of life, or what scares them?
"Success"? What is success? Do we hold CEO's as spiritual leaders, their quotes distributed like gospel, their money proof of their divinity? Should it be that way? Are there greater successes than the accumulation wealth... but bits in a database or numbers on an account statement?
One of the things I want out of life is to create something special which provides a deeper insight into the human experience. My childhood heroes were the scientists who probed the nature of reality, who changed the way humans thought about existence. Mathematicians who found patterns in what appeared random, philosophers who used empiricism and logic to derive truth.
Eight months ago I left my job without a new one. I had interviewed with Google, Citadel, accomplished companies which we all respect! But they all left me underwhelmed. The positions didn't fit with my entrepreneurial spirit or broad interests. It seemed like they needed me to be a cog in a machine. And then I interviewed with Scalp Trade.
Scalp Trade has been around for 6 years, but you probably haven't heard of it. About a year ago, the technical team had lost sight of the company's vision to the point that the team no longer worked. They, along with several traders, split from the company. At that moment, one of Scalp Trade's star traders -- the most technically inclined of them all -- took the helm with a vision to right the ship. He had a vision of a company built on talent and determination, one that would create rather than maintain.
He wanted his company to give to intelligent people what they sought: a three-dimensional, immersive life experience. Like the Manhattan Project -- a collection of smart people who come to work because they love what they do, and do it with talented people working towards something great that none of them could do alone.
Scalp Trade is located at 100 S Wacker, on the second floor, in an office that is 80% empty, where traders and engineers work side by side. Every day when I walk into the office, that 80% inspires in me a profound sense of possibility.
The new CTO's first step toward his vision was to hire me. I immediately saw the possibilities he saw, sensed his ability to achieve them, and as time has gone on my conviction has only grown.
We are looking for an individual who can add to our vision, who can contribute to our energy and zeal, who has ambitions that a nine to five won't fulfill. You will help re-imagine our back-end, using C++ to modernize our current infrastructure and nodeJS/GCP to create an entire trading system in the cloud. We are looking for an individual who will challenge us, who will push us to be the best we can be. Someone who will add creativity and work ethic to this thing we are building.
Our back-end is written in C++, which is a must, and our cloud deployment will be written in nodeJS or Python . C# is a bonus, as we write a lot of trader-facing apps in that language. Knowledge of networking, a great capacity to learn, persistence, toughness, the kind of personality who could make friends with the locals if dropped in a pub in Britain.
US citizens only, must have a degree, experience in finance a plus. Pay will be commensurate with experience: 75-110k base, + bonus.
Job Type: Full-time
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