Kaiko Careers

What you’ll be doing:

• Design, develop and deploy scalable and observable backend microservices
• Reflect on our storage, querying and aggregation capabilities, as well as the technologies required to meet our objectives
• Work hand-in-hand with the business team on developing new features, addressing issues and extending the platform

Our tech stack:

• Platforms (packaged in containers): Golang but we also recently started Rust for some specific use cases
• Protocols: gRPC, HTTP (phasing out in favor of gRPC), WebSocket (phasing out in favor of gRPC)
• Database systems: ClickHouse (main datastore), PostgreSQL (ACID workloads), ScyllaDB
• Messaging: Kafka
• Caching: Redis
• Configuration management and provisioning: Terraform, Ansible
• Service deployment: Terraform, Nomad (plugged in Consul and Vault), Kubernetes
• Secrets management and PKI: Vault
• Service discovery: Consul
• Proxying: HAProxy, Traefik
• Monitoring: VictoriaMetrics, Grafana
• Alerting: AlertManager, Pager
• DutyLogging: Vector, Loki

About You:

• Significant experience as a Software/DevOps Engineer
• Knowledgeable about data ingestion pipelines and massive data querying
• Worked with, in no particular order: microservices architecture, infrastructure as a code, self-managed services (eg. deploy and maintain our own databases), distributed services, server-side development, etc
You’ll notice that we don’t have any “hard” requirements in terms of development platforms or technologies: this is because we are primarily interested in people capable of adapting to an ever changing landscape of technical requirements, who learn fast and are not afraid to constantly push our technical boundaries.It is not uncommon for us to benchmark new technologies for a specific feature, or to change our infrastructure in a big way to better suit our needs.The most important skills for us revolve around two things:What we like to call “core” knowledge: what’s a software process, how does it interact with a machine’s or the network’s resources, what kind of constraints can we expect for certain workloads, etcHow fast you can adapt to a technology you didn’t know existed 10 minutes ago
In short, we are looking for someone able to spot early on that spending 10 days to migrate data to a more efficient schema is the better solution compared to scaling out a database cluster in a matter of minutes if we are looking to improve performance in the long term.

Nice to have

• Experience with data scraping over HTTP, WebSocket, and/or FIX Protocol
• Experience developing financial product methodologies for indices, reference rates, and exchange rates
• Knowledgeable about the technicalities of financial market data, such as the difference between: calls, puts, straddles, different types of bonds, swaps, CFD, CDS, options, futures, etc

• Lead and manage a team of QA professionals.
• Provide guidance, mentorship, and training to QA team members.
• Foster a culture of quality and continuous improvement within the QA team.
• Act as a subject matter expert in quality assurance and test automation, providing guidance and support to project teams and engineering staff.
• Work primarily with one product squad in our Product Engineering structure.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand project requirements, identify testing needs, and design effective test strategies.
• Mentor and coach engineers on test automation best practices, tools, and frameworks, with a focus on leveraging the Go language for testing.
• Lead the design, implementation, and maintenance of automated tests using test automation frameworks.
• Work closely with Product team members to drive test-first thinking into requirementsHelp the teams to conduct thorough regression testing to identify and resolve any potential issues or defects before product release.
• Advise and assist in load testing and security testing efforts to ensure optimal system performance and integrity
• .Work closely with developers to identify and resolve defects and continuously improve the testing process.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to provide clear and concise documentation of test plans, test cases, and test results.
• Evaluate and recommend improvements to existing testing methodologies and strategies, incorporating Go-based solutions.
• Keep up-to-date with the latest industry trends and emerging technologies in quality assurance, test automation, and language best practices.

About You:

• Must have:
• Extensive experience as a Quality Assurance Engineer or Software Developer in Test, with a strong focus on test automation and coaching/mentoring engineers.
• Proven expertise in using test automation frameworks
• Strong coding skills, with an emphasis on writing clean and efficient code for test automation.
• Familiarity with Agile development methodologies and experience working in Agile teams.
• Coaching and mentoring skills, with a passion for helping engineers grow and succeed.
• Ability to work independently and in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, with a keen eye for detail.
• Good communication skills, with fluency in English. Knowledge of French is a plus
• Nice to have:
• Experience in the financial industry, cryptocurrency, or low-latency trading will be highly valued.
• Knowledge of load testing tools and security testing tools and techniques.
• Experience of developing in the Go programming language

What you’ll be doing

• Data Debrief: Kaiko publishes a weekly data-driven newsletter read by thousands of industry professionals. One of your missions will be to support this newsletter with original charts and content:Keep up to date with the latest trends in crypto by reading news sources such as Coindesk, the Block, Messari, etc.Create unique and relevant charts and infographics in response to market events. Write short, easy-to-understand analyses related to these charts.Propose new ideas weekly.
• Deep Dive: Kaiko publishes a weekly Deep Dive, providing a deeper look into a crypto research topic. These are longer-form research pieces leveraging Kaiko’s granular data, and are used frequently within our sales cycle to demonstrate our data products. As a research analyst, you will be expected to produce these every other week.
• Market Reports: Kaiko publishes a quarterly market report, summarizing the previous month’s market events. The goal of these reports is to bridge the gap between the crypto and traditional financial industry:Write longer written content for more in-depth reports.Analyze markets on a wider timescale and identify long term trends.Propose new ideas for reports in response to marketing needs, competition, and changing industry trends.
• Social Media / Media: As the leading data provider, Kaiko’s social media channels are used to publish charts and quick bits of analysis. One of your missions will be to create content specifically for these channels and for journalists:Twitter - capture the tone of crypto twitter and publish responsive data-driven insights uniquely relevant to this communityForm relationships with market analysts in the industry to propose custom charting and quick analyses for their reporting.
• Custom Reports and Research Partnerships: Kaiko frequently gets contacted for collaborative reports with partners or clients. You will contribute to these reports and propose new ideas. This will require innovation and creativity as we continue to expand our brand through research partnerships.

About You

• You are fluent in written English.
• You have a strong interest and curiosity in crypto.
• You have previous writing experience, either of financial market analyses or a similar writing style.You have the ability to make deadlines and consistently produce high-quality work
• .You have the ability to propose creative and original research ideas.
• You have the ability to manipulate datasets and create charts with tools such as Tableau. Coding experience is not required, but the job will require manipulation of datasets using no-code tools.
• You have a strong understanding of financial markets, economic trends, and market data.

Nice to have

• An understanding of complex DeFi topics.
• An understanding of derivatives markets (options, futures, perpetual futures) and experience analyzing derivatives-specific measures such as open interest.
• Experience designing newsletters using Hubspot and creating infographics using tools like Canva or Piktocharts.

Personal Skills

• Honest: receiving and giving feedback is very important to you
• Humble: making new errors is an essential part of your journey
• Empathetic: you feel a sense of responsibility for all the team’s endeavors rather than focus on individual contributions
• Committed: as an equally important member of the team, you want to make yourself heard while respecting everybody’s point of view
• Fluent in written and spoken English
• You have the utmost respect for legacy code and infrastructure, with some occasional and perfectly understandable respectful complaints

• Crypto Asset Research: keep track of important updates happening with the 10.000 cryptocurrencies that Kaiko currently covers.
• Reference Data Maintenance: Kaiko collects data on 120 exchanges, for 10.000 different crypto assets, and over 400.000 individual asset pairs. You will help with the maintenance of this database.
• Data Quality Monitoring: together with the Product Managers and QA team, you will be responsible for spotting and flagging issues with our data that are caused by issues with our reference data.

About you

• You are studying in the fields of Computer Science, Finance or any other relevant field.
• You have an affinity for crypto and blockchain, as well as finance and are eager to learn more about the world of digital assets.
• You are a quick learner, who is able to work independently and as part of a team.
• Excellent problem-solving skills with the ability to troubleshoot issues independently.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to interact effectively with individuals at all levels of the organization.
• Proactive mindset with a focus on continuous improvement and adapting to evolving technology landscapes.
• Fluency in French & English
• Programming qualifications are a bonus

About You

• Significant experience as a Golang Software/Data Engineer
• Good understanding of Blockchain technologies and a general interest and curiosity about crypto currencies (we are focusing on Ethereum now but other blockchains will come soon)
• Some understanding of the existing DeFi protocols: Curve, Balancer, AMMs, Aave, Aggregators ... Ideally, you have used and integrated these protocols before either with your own smart contract or a DApp
• You can find your way around on online blockchain explorers like etherscan
• You can abstract the complexity of low-level smart contract interactions through scripting and REST APIs
• You can learn fast ! DeFi is changing constantly
• Knowledgeable about data ingestion pipelines and massive data querying
• Worked with, in no particular order: microservices architecture, distributed services, server-side development, etc
• Honest: receiving and giving feedback is very important to you
• Humble: making new errors is an essential part of your journey
• Empathetic: you feel a sense of responsibility for all the team’s endeavors rather than focus on individual contributions
• Committed: as an equally important member of the team, you want to make yourself heard while respecting everybody’s point of view
• Fluent in written and spoken EnglishYou have the utmost respect for legacy code and infrastructure, with some occasional and perfectly understandable respectful complaints

What we offer

• An attractive compensation package, including equity and healthcare.
• An entrepreneurial environment with a lot of autonomy and responsibilities.
• Opportunity to work with an internationally diverse team.
• The hardware of your choice to help you deliver your best work.
• Good perks (remote friendly, Swile meal vouchers, multiple team events and staff surprises).

Talent Acquisition Process

• Interview with the Talent Acquisition team
• Call with the Hiring Manager
• Technical Assessment
• Cross team interviews with 2-3 team members

Nice to have

• Some experience of setting up a node, maintaining it and querying it
• An ability to read and understand smart contracts (Solidity and Vyper for now) and to interact with them for quick prototyping
• Knowledgeable about the technicalities of financial market data, such as the difference between: calls, puts, straddles, different types of bonds, swaps, CFD, CDS, options, futures, etc.