---
title: 'Sr. Database Reliability Engineer II at NinjaTrader'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-database-reliability-engineer-ii-ninjatrader-chicago-8e5xagcx8vk3'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-13'
---

# Sr. Database Reliability Engineer II at NinjaTrader

- **Company:** NinjaTrader
- **Location:** Chicago, IL
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-13
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/ninjatrader/jobs/4710639006

## Job description

Disclaimer: Please be advised that the most accurate and up-to-date information about our open roles—including job descriptions, compensation, and benefits—can only be guaranteed on our official job board. For the latest listings and details, please visit: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/ninjatrader.

JOIN US ON OUR MISSION TO BECOME THE #1 RETAIL TRADING PLATFORM IN THE WORLD

Welcome to the dynamic world of NinjaTrader! As an industry-leading trading platform and futures broker, we're empowering traders to take control of their financial destiny. How do we do it? We provide cutting-edge products and services that enhance the trading journey. Whether a seasoned pro or just starting out, NinjaTrader equips traders with award-winning software and brokerage services to navigate the world's leading financial markets with confidence.

Our growth story is nothing short of exhilarating. Since 2003, NinjaTrader has been dedicated to understanding and supporting traders on their journey toward trading triumph. Through those efforts, our user base has grown to over 2 million users and we have become the number one rated futures brokerage worldwide.

But we're not stopping there. We're constantly evolving, pushing boundaries, and modernizing the futures industry. Our commitment to innovation means users will always have access to dynamic tools, real-time support, and a community of like-minded traders.

So, why work at NinjaTrader? Here, you're not just part of a team; you're part of a movement. We empower employees to reach new heights in their careers by providing a dynamic culture focused on social connection, professional development, and employee recognition initiatives. Sounds too good to be true? [Take it from our employees.](https://www.greatplacetowork.com/certified-company/7025362)

Join us as we redefine what's possible in trading, advocate for our customers, and continue our journey toward becoming the world's top retail-focused trading platform in the world.

What you'll do:

As a Sr. Database Reliability  Engineer II, you will help architect, evolve, and optimize the data platform powering NinjaTrader's core trading applications. This is not a traditional Database Administrator (DBA) role. We're looking for a software engineer with deep MySQL/Postgres expertise who enjoys solving complex data challenges while remaining actively involved in software development.

You'll partner closely with software engineers, architects, and platform teams to improve database performance, evolve our data architecture, build developer tooling, and establish engineering best practices that enable our platform to continue scaling. You'll play a key role in shaping the future direction of our data platform by driving initiatives that improve scalability, resiliency, developer productivity, and operational excellence.

This role is ideal for someone who has spent their career building production software and naturally became the database expert responsible for solving performance bottlenecks, designing scalable schemas, and improving application reliability.

In this role you will:

- Design and evolve MySQL schemas supporting high-volume transactional workloads
- Define and drive improvements to NinjaTrader's data platform architecture, including online schema changes, zero/low-downtime database migrations, blue/green deployments, and scalability initiatives that support long-term platform growth.
- Analyze and optimize SQL queries, indexes, and execution plans to improve application performance
- Develop production-quality software that improves our persistence layer, developer tooling, and data platform capabilities
- Design scalable data models that balance performance, maintainability, and long-term growth
- Build reusable libraries, frameworks, and tooling that simplify data access and improve developer productivity across engineering teams
- Lead database performance tuning initiatives across applications and services
- Drive modernization initiatives for database architecture, deployment processes, and operational reliability
- Design and implement safe, repeatable database migration strategies supporting continuous delivery
- Investigate and resolve complex production issues involving application performance, database behavior, locking, concurrency, and data integrity
- Establish engineering standards and best practices for schema design, indexing, SQL development, database migrations, and data access patterns
- Partner with Platform Engineering to improve database monitoring, backup strategies, disaster recovery, and operational resilience
- Leverage Google Cloud Platform services, including Cloud SQL, Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, and related tooling, to improve the reliability, scalability, and observability of our data platform
- Mentor engineers on data modeling, SQL optimization, MySQL best practices, and application performance optimization
- Lead technical design discussions and architecture reviews related to database-backed applications
- Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend solutions that improve platform scalability, maintainability, and engineering efficiency
- Serve as a technical leader and trusted advisor for database architecture, application performance, and data platform best practices

What you'll need:

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Strong experience building backend applications using Java, C#, Go, Python, Kotlin, Scala, or similar modern programming languages
- Expert-level experience with MySQL in large-scale production environments
- Deep understanding of:
- SQL optimization
- Query execution plans
- Indexing strategies
- Transactions and isolation levels
- Locking and concurrency
- Schema design and normalization
- Replication and high availability
- Experience designing scalable database schemas for high-volume transactional applications
- Experience troubleshooting complex application and database performance issues
- Experience implementing database migration strategies supporting continuous delivery
- Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, and engineering best practices
- Experience leading technical initiatives and influencing architectural decisions across engineering teams
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers and cross-functional stakeholders
- Passion for improving developer productivity by building automation, developer tooling, database testing frameworks, performance benchmarking harnesses, and engineering best practices.

Bonus points for:

- Experience building and operating applications on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- Experience with Cloud SQL for MySQL
- Experience using Google Cloud services such as Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, Secret Manager, Cloud Build, or Cloud Deploy
- Experience supporting financial services, trading platforms, or other high-throughput transactional systems
- Experience working in startup or high-growth engineering environments where engineers owned both application development and database performance
- Experience improving developer productivity through tooling and automation
- Experience designing highly available, fault-tolerant distributed systems
- Experience implementing observability solutions, performance monitoring, and database telemetry
- Experience leveraging AI/ML tools or technologies to improve software development, operational efficiency, or engineering productivity

Compensation:

The salary range for this role will be $130,000.00 - $180,000.00 USD. In addition, this position will also receive an annual target bonus of 10%. Bonus pay at NinjaTrader is based on individual performance (50%) as well as company/team performance (50%).

Salary and bonus earnings are only two components of the total compensation package offered by NinjaTrader. NinjaTrader offers a 401K plan through ADP under which the company will match up to 3.5% of employee contributions. Annual paid time off allowance accrues at a rate of 18 days per year plus seven paid holidays.

All offered compensation will be based on assessed experience and is subject to change at the offer stage.

Location:

This role is based in Chicago, IL. *There may be remote flexibility for exceptional candidates in the following states: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington DC, Wisconsin.

Hybrid:

For Chicago-based employees, we follow a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday, with remote work on Mondays and Fridays. In addition to these weekly remote days, we offer:

- 20 additional flex remote days annually
- 5 Company Wide Office-Optional weeks tied to major holidays

Our Core Benefits Include:

- Generous PTO
- 7 Paid Holidays Annually + 5 Conditional Holidays Annually
- 1 Service Day Annually
- 401k with 3.5% Company Match
- Paid Parental Bonding Leave
- Health, Vision, Dental Coverage
- Life and Disability Insurance Covered 100% by NinjaTrader

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

## About NinjaTrader

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: NinjaTrader is an award-winning futures trading platform and brokerage that empowers active traders with advanced software, analytics, and brokerage services.
- **Entity Type**: Private (subsidiary of Payward, Inc. / Kraken, acquired March 2025)
- **Headquarters**: Chicago, Illinois, United States
- **Founded**: 2004 (company began operations in 2003 per its website)
- **Founders**: Not publicly available

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Financial Services – Futures Trading, Brokerage, Fintech
- **Target customers**: B2C (active retail futures traders) and B2B (third-party developers and institutions via its platform ecosystem)
- **Mission**: “Empower traders worldwide with award-winning technology and brokerage services” and “build products and services that empower active traders to easily analyze and react to data from the world's leading financial markets.”

## Products & Services
- **NinjaTrader Platform**: Award-winning trading software for futures, featuring advanced charting, market analytics, trade simulation, and trading system development. Available on desktop (PC/Mac), web, and mobile.
- **Brokerage Services** (via NinjaTrader Clearing, LLC): Futures brokerage with low commissions ($0.09 per contract), low intraday margins ($50), and no deposit minimum.
- **Add-on Ecosystem**: 1,000+ third-party add-ons and a C#-based development framework for building custom indicators, strategies, and tools.
- **Simulated Trading**: Free unlimited simulated trading for practice and strategy testing.
- **Education**: Free premium trading education tools and resources.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Acquired by Kraken in March 2025 for $1.5 billion (valuation at acquisition). Prior private equity round in 2020 led by Long Ridge Equity Partners.
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue of $75 million (latest available); over 2 million users globally.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Long Ridge Equity Partners (lead investor in 2020), Kraken (acquirer), Payward, Inc. (parent company). Also acquired Tradovate in 2022 for $115 million.
- **Growth Signals**: 25.7% YoY headcount growth (353 employees, +104 YoY); active job postings up 114.3% YoY; operates in 28 countries; Great Place to Work Certified.

## Competitive Advantages
- #1 rated futures broker (self-reported) with award-winning software.
- Integrated platform + brokerage (one-stop shop for futures traders).
- Large, loyal user base (over 2 million) and strong community.
- Low-cost structure (low commissions, low margins) appealing to active traders.
- C# development framework enables a rich ecosystem of custom tools and third-party add-ons.
- Multi-device support (desktop, web, mobile) for seamless trading.

## Strategic Focus
- Mission to “become the #1 retail trading platform in the world.”
- Modernizing the futures industry through continuous product innovation.
- Expanding globally (already in 28 countries) and deepening integration with Kraken’s crypto ecosystem.
- Scaling engineering and product teams to build next-generation trading tools.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Dynamic culture focused on social connection, professional development, and employee recognition initiatives.” Great Place to Work Certified.
- **Benefits**: Health, vision, dental coverage; 401(k) with company match; 100% employer-paid life and disability insurance; generous PTO; paid holidays.
- **Remote/Hybrid**: Many roles are listed as “Chicago or Remote*” (e.g., Sr. Data Engineer, Staff Software Engineer). HQ in Chicago with a hybrid-friendly approach.
- **Engineering Culture**: Strong technical teams working on trading systems, data engineering, AI, and backend services. Tech stack includes C#, Scala, and modern cloud infrastructure. Internship program available.
- **Career Development**: Emphasis on internal career development and employee recognition.

## Sources
1. [ninjatrader.com](https://ninjatrader.com/careers/)
2. [job-boards.greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/ninjatrader)
3. [ninjatrader.com](https://ninjatrader.com/careers/job-openings/)
4. [ninjatrader.com](https://ninjatrader.com/)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ninjatrader-group-llc)

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