Senior Software Developer (Front End), Trading
Frontend Engineer · Senior · Full Time · Remote
Opens Wealthsimple Technologies's application page
Role
What you'll do.
Senior Front End Engineer role at Wealthsimple, Canada's leading fintech company, focused on building high-stakes trading and investing platforms. Own end-to-end frontend projects across order execution, options trading, and crypto trading surfaces serving 4 million+ Canadians. Requires 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with strong React, TypeScript, and AI-first development workflows, plus proven ability to deliver production-grade systems with exceptional reliability and performance standards.
Responsibilities
- Own End-to-End Frontend Projects: Take complete ownership of complex trading frontend projects from technical design through implementation, launch, and iteration. Drive architectural decisions that balance speed, quality, and scale while influencing the product roadmap and technical direction of the trading team.
- Build High-Performance Trading Surfaces: Design and implement client-facing order entry, execution, and portfolio management interfaces for equities, options, and cryptocurrency trading. Optimize for reliability and performance—milliseconds matter when executing real trades affecting millions of Canadians' investments.
- Develop Real-Time Market Data Experiences: Create responsive interfaces that display live market data, order status, and portfolio updates. Implement efficient data synchronization patterns and real-time WebSocket integrations to ensure clients see accurate, up-to-date information instantly.
- Implement Reliability and Observability Standards: Establish comprehensive error handling, monitoring, and observability practices specific to high-stakes financial transactions. Build with the expectation that any performance degradation or failure is immediately noticed and impacts client trust and trading decisions.
- Partner with Product and Design Teams: Collaborate closely with product managers and designers to clarify user goals, surface technical trade-offs, and deliver meaningful outcomes. Contribute product judgment and maker-owner mentality to ensure frontend decisions align with user needs and business objectives.
- Leverage AI-Centric Development Workflows: Utilize advanced AI tooling and agentic workflows to accelerate development velocity while maintaining rigor and quality. Push the frontier of AI-assisted development, knowing when models are reliable versus when human verification is critical before production deployment.
- Raise Technical Standards Across the Team: Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through thorough code reviews, design reviews, and technical documentation. Conduct design sessions, facilitate pairing sessions, and establish best practices that elevate the entire team's technical craftsmanship and architectural thinking.
Qualifications
What we look for.
Technical
React and TypeScript Mastery
Advanced proficiency building performant, maintainable React applications with TypeScript. Deep understanding of component architecture, state management patterns, hooks, and type systems. Ability to write type-safe code that prevents runtime errors in critical trading workflows.
Frontend Performance Optimization
Expert-level knowledge of frontend performance optimization including code splitting, lazy loading, memoization, and bundle analysis. Experience profiling applications and identifying performance bottlenecks in production environments. Understanding of how frontend performance directly impacts user experience in latency-sensitive trading scenarios.
Real-Time Data Handling
Proven experience building frontend systems that handle high-frequency, real-time data streams. Knowledge of WebSocket protocols, efficient data synchronization patterns, and state management for constantly-updating information. Experience with order book displays, live pricing feeds, or similar real-time financial data interfaces.
API Integration and GraphQL
Strong experience consuming REST and GraphQL APIs. Ability to design efficient API queries, handle pagination and caching, and implement resilient network communication patterns. Understanding of how frontend architecture decisions impact API performance and data flow.
AI-First Development Practices
Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools and agentic workflows that go beyond simple code autocomplete. Strong judgment about when AI-generated code is production-ready versus when manual verification and rigorous testing are required. Experience maintaining code quality and security while leveraging AI for accelerated development.
Cross-Platform Mobile Development
Strong foundation in React Native for iOS and Android development, or native mobile experience with Swift/iOS or Kotlin/Android. Ability to build consistent trading experiences across web, iOS, and Android platforms. Understanding of platform-specific performance constraints and native APIs relevant to financial applications.
Education
Computer Science Fundamentals
Strong foundation in computer science principles including data structures, algorithms, system design, and asynchronous programming. Comfortable reasoning about time complexity, space complexity, and architectural trade-offs in system design.
Experience
5+ Years Professional Software Engineering
Minimum five years of professional software engineering experience with a demonstrated track record of shipping production-grade systems that real users depend on. Proven ability to take ownership of projects from conception through launch and ongoing maintenance.
Production Frontend Systems at Scale
Significant experience building and maintaining frontend systems serving real users in production environments. Track record of improving system reliability, performance, and user experience based on real-world usage patterns and feedback.
Technical Leadership and Mentorship
Demonstrated ability to lead through technical excellence rather than formal authority. Experience mentoring other engineers, conducting design reviews, writing clear technical documentation, and setting technical standards for teams. Ability to navigate ambiguity and bring collaborators along with a low-ego, collaborative approach.
Financial or High-Reliability Domain Experience (Preferred)
Previous experience building trading platforms, brokerage interfaces, or other real-time, high-reliability financial systems. Alternatively, experience in mission-critical systems where uptime and correctness are paramount—healthcare, payments, or infrastructure. This background helps understand the stakes and standards required.
Skills
Required
React
Expert-level React proficiency including functional components, hooks, state management, and performance optimization. Ability to architect scalable component hierarchies and handle complex UI state in high-stakes trading applications.
TypeScript
Advanced TypeScript skills with deep knowledge of type system, generics, utility types, and type inference. Ability to leverage TypeScript's type safety to prevent bugs in critical trading workflows and maintain code quality as codebases scale.
Frontend Performance
Expert understanding of frontend performance fundamentals including rendering optimization, bundle analysis, code splitting, and profiling tools. Ability to identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks that impact user experience in latency-sensitive trading scenarios.
HTML and CSS
Solid command of semantic HTML and modern CSS including flexbox, grid, and responsive design. Ability to build accessible, performant, and visually polished user interfaces that work reliably across browsers and devices.
REST and GraphQL APIs
Strong experience consuming and designing REST and GraphQL APIs from the frontend. Understanding of query optimization, caching strategies, and error handling for reliable backend communication in trading applications.
Browser APIs and Web Standards
Deep familiarity with browser APIs including DOM, events, storage, and performance APIs. Understanding of how modern browsers work and ability to leverage web standards for reliable, performant applications.
Version Control and Git
Proficiency with Git and collaborative development workflows. Ability to write clear commit messages, manage branches, and work effectively in teams using code review best practices.
AI-Assisted Development
Working proficiency with modern AI development tools and agentic workflows. Ability to use AI to accelerate development while maintaining rigorous testing, security practices, and production readiness standards.
Preferred
React Native
Nice to haveExperience building cross-platform mobile applications with React Native. Understanding of platform-specific performance considerations and native module integration for iOS and Android trading applications.
Native Mobile Development
Nice to haveHands-on experience building native iOS applications with Swift or native Android applications with Kotlin. Valuable for understanding mobile platform constraints and implementing high-performance trading experiences on mobile devices.
GraphQL and Apollo
Nice to haveSpecialized experience with GraphQL APIs, Apollo Client, and modern data fetching patterns. Ability to optimize GraphQL queries for performance and implement efficient caching strategies in frontend applications.
Performance Optimization Expertise
Nice to haveAdvanced skills in frontend performance optimization including Web Vitals optimization, Core Web Vitals improvement, and profiling tools like Chrome DevTools. Experience taking products from poor performance baselines to industry-leading performance standards.
Ruby on Rails Backend Knowledge
Nice to haveFamiliarity with Ruby on Rails for working across the full stack. Valuable for understanding backend constraints and collaborating with backend engineers on performance-critical trading features.
Kotlin or Java Backend Knowledge
Nice to haveKnowledge of Kotlin or Java for collaborating with backend teams. Helpful for understanding backend patterns and cross-stack optimization opportunities in trading platforms.
Trading or Financial Expertise
Nice to havePersonal experience as an active investor or trader. Deep understanding of trading workflows, order types, portfolio management, and financial concepts. This domain knowledge helps build more intuitive and valuable trading experiences.
Fintech Industry Experience
Nice to havePrevious experience in fintech companies or other fast-moving environments where engineers have broad ownership and meaningful product influence. Understanding of fintech-specific challenges like compliance, security, and real-time data handling.
Tech stack
Languages
Frameworks
Databases
Tools
Other
Compensation
Pay and benefits.
Base·CAD 151,200 – 189,000
Full posting
Original listing.
Build something people love
Wealthsimple is Canada’s leading financial innovator. The company offers a full suite of simple, sophisticated financial products across managed investing, do-it-yourself trading, cryptocurrency, tax filing, spending and saving. Wealthsimple currently serves more than 4 million Canadians and holds over $155 billion in assets under administration. The company was founded in 2014 by a team of financial experts and technology entrepreneurs, and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
We're proud of what we've built — and we're just getting started. Read our Culture Manual and learn more about how we work.
About the role
As a Senior Front End Engineer on our trading and investing teams, you'll own meaningful slices of the experiences at the heart of Canada's first zero-commission brokerage - the surfaces over 4 million Canadians rely on, and invest with. This is a pipeline role across several frontend-focused teams, including Order Execution and Options Trading, and we'll match you to the team where your experience and interests fit best.
These are high-visibility, high-stakes surfaces: the order flow across equities, options, and crypto, and the trading experiences active clients use every day. A slow screen or a mishandled order is felt immediately by our clients, so the bar for reliability, performance, and craft is high. You'll bring strong technical judgment, a bias toward action, and a deep sense of ownership, working closely with product managers, designers, and engineers to turn complex, high-stakes problems into simple, reliable trading experiences.
What you'll do
Own complex, end-to-end frontend projects across the trading experience - from technical design through implementation, launch, and iteration
Build and improve the client-facing surfaces that power our order flow and trading products, with a focus on reliability, performance, and correctness
Work on high-stakes client journeys: order entry and execution, options trading, real-time market data, and portfolio experiences across equities, options, and crypto
Make thoughtful architectural decisions and help the team balance speed, quality, and scale — influence what we build, how we build it, and where we go next
Partner closely with Product and Design to clarify goals, surface trade-offs, and deliver outcomes, not just features
Build with the reliability and observability standards that trading journeys demand — clients notice the moment something is slow or wrong
Leverage AI-centric workflows to ship faster and safer — we invest heavily in AI tooling and expect senior engineers to push the frontier of how we use these tools
Raise the technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, pairing, and mentorship
What you bring
5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping production-grade systems that real users depend on
Strong frontend fundamentals with React and TypeScript, and ideally React Native — you build performant, reliable client experiences and understand how they behave under real-world conditions.
Native mobile experience (Swift/iOS or Kotlin/Android) is a strong plus, whether you've built native apps directly or directed and reviewed native work
An AI-first development workflow that doesn't compromise on rigour — you've moved beyond AI as autocomplete into genuinely agentic workflows, and bring the judgment to know when the model is wrong, where the risks are, and what verification a change needs before it touches production
Product judgment and a maker-owner mindset — you care about the client problem, simplify complexity, and want to own and grow a domain over time, not just ship the next ticket
Technical leadership and strong communication — you raise the bar through your code, reviews, and design docs, navigate ambiguity, and bring others along with a collaborative, low-ego approach
Nice to have experience
Experience building trading, brokerage, or other real-time, high-reliability financial surfaces
GraphQL and performance optimization experience
Ruby on Rails, Kotlin, or Java experience — helpful for working across the stack, but not a requirement; depth and willingness to ramp matter more
Experience in a fast-moving environment where engineers have broad ownership and meaningful influence over product decisions
Passionate about trading and investing, perhaps even an active investor or trader yourself, and you use that perspective to build experiences that feel intuitive to people managing their own money.
Why Wealthsimple?
🌸 Top-tier health benefits and life insurance
📈 Long-term group savings with employer match, through Wealthsimple for Business
🌴 20 vacation days, 4 wellness days, and unlimited sick and mental health days per year*
✈️ 90 days away: work outside Canada for up to 90 days per year*
👥 Employee resource groups, including Rainbow (2SLGBTQ), Women of WS, and Black at WS
🌎 We are a hybrid team with over 1,500 employees across North America. The people are one of the best parts of working here: you'll collaborate with incredibly talented, curious, and driven teammates who are deeply committed to doing great work.
*Unlimited paid sick days, Wellness Days and the 90 day away program do not apply to certain roles.
ICYMI
Technology & Innovation at Wealthsimple: We move quickly and build thoughtfully. That means we're always looking for better ways to work — whether that's new tools, AI, or rethinking how we approach a problem. We don't expect you to have all the answers, but we do expect curiosity and a willingness to evolve alongside the products we're building.
Inclusion Statement: We're building products for a diverse world, and we need a diverse team to do it well. We strongly encourage applications from everyone, regardless of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status.
Accessibility Statement: We're committed to an accessible hiring experience. If you need any accommodations throughout the interview process, please let us know — we'll work with you to make sure you have what you need. We also welcome any feedback on how we can better accommodate candidates with accessibility needs.
AI in Hiring: We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of our hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our team but don't replace human judgment – all final hiring decisions are made by people. If you have questions about how your data is used, reach out to us.
Redirects to Wealthsimple Technologies's application page.
Other roles
More at Wealthsimple Technologies.
Senior Software Developer, ML Platform & Infrastructure
Senior
Senior Software Developer, Build Platform
Senior
Senior Software Developer, AI Platform
Senior
Senior Software Developer, Post-Trade Management
Senior
Manager, Software Development - Financial Risk
Manager