Trading platform and broker back-office engineering.
For brokers and founders building or extending their own trading infrastructure.
A trading platform is a ledger with a price feed attached, and both have to be right at the same time. My recent years have been inside live broker and prop-trading systems: back-office APIs, risk monitors, payment flows and the services between them. I bring that to teams building their own platform.
Work I do on live systems
Broker back-office APIs
Order and transaction views, maker-checker approvals, paginated lists and CSV or PDF exports, behind role and field-level permissions.
Crypto and multi-asset precision
8-decimal amounts carried correctly through APIs, models and access-control definitions.
Risk monitoring
Loss and equity rules checked continuously, with safeguards that refuse to act on numbers that do not add up.
Integrations
MetaTrader 5, payment providers, KYC data and messaging platforms, with signed webhooks and retries.
Event-driven sync
Client portal and back office kept consistent through a message queue, including the deploy order that keeps both sides working.
Production debugging
Tracing a failure across services by correlation id to the exact line, proving the cause, then making the smallest safe fix.
What I can build next
A proprietary trading engine
Not yet delivered as a finished product
Some founders want their own execution core instead of renting one. I have not shipped a complete proprietary trading engine in production, and I will not pretend otherwise. I have built and run the systems around one. This is how I would approach the engine itself.
Price ingestion
Normalised quotes from data or liquidity providers with staleness detection, so no order is ever filled against a dead price.
Order lifecycle
Market, limit and stop orders as an explicit state machine: every transition recorded, every request idempotent.
Positions, P&L and margin
Realised and unrealised P&L, equity, used and free margin computed by one implementation in fixed-point decimals.
Margin call and stop-out
Deterministic liquidation rules, tested by replaying recorded price sequences before they touch a live account.
B-Book first, A-Book later
An execution interface that starts with internal fills and leaves room for external routing and hybrid models.
Multi-brand from the first schema
Tenant, brand and entity modelled from the start, so white-label operation is configuration and not a rewrite.
Before it goes liveA trading engine that holds client money needs independent testing, a security review and legal and regulatory sign-off before it goes live. I plan for those. I do not replace them.
Proof, not promises
- Payments and crypto back office at a live brokerJob · CFI FinancialSenior Backend Engineer on a live multi-asset broker: crypto back-office APIs, maker-checker flows, field-level permissions and payment methods in production.
- MT5 Manager API service and real-time risk monitorFreelance · TradersFlow (TRFC)The MT5 integration service and real-time breach monitor for a live prop-trading platform.
How we can work together
Start small. Commit when it works.
Every engagement starts with a written scope. You know what you are getting, what it costs and what is left out before any work begins.
- 01Fixed fee · 1 to 3 weeks
Technical discovery sprint
I review your requirements, existing code and third-party access, then deliver a written architecture, a feasibility and risk report and a milestone plan. Yours to keep, whoever builds it.
- 02Paid by milestone
Fixed-scope MVP build
A defined first release, built in milestones on a staging environment you can use throughout. You pay for delivered milestones, not for hours.
- 03Monthly
Founding engineer contract
I join as your hands-on technical owner: architecture, backend, front end, infrastructure and releases, working directly with you.
- 04Part-time · monthly
Fractional technical lead
You already have a developer or a small team. I own the architecture and the risky parts, review the work and keep delivery honest.
I quote each engagement in USD after a first call. I work from Malaysia with no agency layer, so the budget goes into engineering, not account management. I price on scope and responsibility, and I am not the cheapest option.
- You work with the person doing the work
- Written scope and milestones
- Source code, access and documentation handed over
- NDA on request
How we would work
- 01
A short call
A no-obligation conversation about what you are building, what exists already and what success looks like.
- 02
A written scope
What I will build, what I will not, the risks and the price. Larger or unclear projects start with a short, paid discovery sprint.
- 03
Small, visible releases
You see working software early and often, on a staging environment you can click through.
- 04
Handover and support
Source code, access, documentation and runbooks, with ongoing support if you want it.
Questions
- Have you built a proprietary trading engine before?
- Not a complete one in production. I have built the MetaTrader 5 integration and risk monitor for a live prop firm, and back-office and payment systems at a live broker. An engine is the next layer down, and I would start it with a paid technical sprint that proves the core: prices in, orders through, margin and stop-out correct under replay tests.
- Can you build a complete exchange or matching engine?
- I build and extend the systems around the trading core: client and back-office APIs, order and wallet flows, approvals, permissions, payments and data sync. Custody and liquidity usually come from specialist providers, and I integrate them. We decide the split in the first call.
- Can you work with our existing front end or developer?
- Yes. I start by reading what exists and writing down what is sound and what is risky. I keep what works.
- Can you help with a trading platform that is slow or buggy?
- Yes. Tracing production bugs across services is a large part of my current job. I reproduce the problem and prove the cause first, then make the smallest safe fix.
- Do you build trading bots or strategies?
- No. I build the platforms, integrations and risk systems that brokers and trading firms run on.
Tell me what you are building.
A few lines are enough: what it is, where it stands today, and what you need from an engineer. The form is just below, or email me if you prefer. I reply within two working days.