Senior Sales Engineer - Japan

About the Position

Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Our recent Series D funding round brought our total investment to over $320 million, fueling our ambitious vision.

Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totaling over 9 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.

Alpaca is proudly backed by top-tier global investors, including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Your Role:

As a Sr. Sales Engineer for New Markets Japan, you will be the go-to product and technical expert for Alpaca's enterprise partners across Japan and the wider APAC region. You will bridge technical and business conversations: a customer-facing engineer with strong API knowledge, experience supporting enterprise customers, fluency in Japanese for customer interactions, and sufficient English proficiency to collaborate effectively with our global team. You will support existing enterprise partners (e.g., SBI) and expand our base of enterprise partners in Japan and APAC, acting as the technical bridge between local partners, vendors, and regulators and Alpaca's global engineering team.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical support and relationship management for existing enterprise customers in Japan (e.g., SBI), acting as a trusted technical advisor throughout the partner lifecycle.
• Partner with the Sales and Solutions teams on pre-sales technical discussions, solution design, and API consultations, and present compelling product and technical use cases to prospective clients.
• Guide new enterprise customers through API integration, implementation, and onboarding.
• Act as the voice of Japanese customers by collaborating with Product and Engineering teams to improve localized experiences; translate complex business and technical requirements (often originating in Japanese) into clear specifications for Alpaca's global engineering team.
• Serve as the product and technical subject matter expert, capable of thoroughly understanding and articulating all aspects of the Alpaca platform to diverse audiences and stakeholders.
• Work closely with local compliance and operations teams to understand local and regional product requirements (e.g., JFSA rules, NISA, local post-trade / settlement practices for US and JP securities).
• Own technical sales engagement end-to-end: discovery calls, solution validation, RFPs, and security questionnaires that win deals; lead demo strategy and execution.
• Create sales support materials and documentation for new features and products, including Japanese-language collateral where needed.
• Coordinate in Japanese with local regulators, vendors, and partners, and relay those requirements to global product and engineering.
• Help customers successfully adopt Alpaca's platform while maintaining a high standard of technical and customer support; travel within Japan / APAC as needed.
• Stay updated on internal product development timelines and work closely with the product team to test and roll out new features to partners.

Requirements

• Experience supporting enterprise / B2B customers in a technical, sales engineering, or solutions engineering role (typically 5+ years), ideally at API or SaaS-first companies.
• Strong understanding of REST APIs, SDKs, and software integration workflows; hands-on experience with APIs, WebSockets, Postman, Grafana, and JSON.
• Native or business-level Japanese, with excellent customer communication skills and a solid understanding of Japanese business culture - essential for partner, vendor, and regulator communication.
• Business-level English for collaborating with global, cross-functional teams; able to drive clarity on goals, set expectations, and collect feedback effectively.
• Able to translate complex technical concepts into simple, understandable terms.
• Self-starter who thrives in a startup environment, manages multiple assignments simultaneously, works independently, and drives projects to completion with close attention to detail.

Nice to Have

• Experience in fintech, capital markets, brokerage, or financial APIs; experience at a Broker-Dealer or securities firm in Japan / APAC.
• Knowledge of Japanese brokerage, post-trade, and settlement operations, NISA, and the JFSA regulatory context.
• Closing enterprise deals alongside Account Executives.
• US securities qualifications (e.g., SIE and/or Series 7).
• Familiarity with Metabase.
• Experience working with the FIX protocol.
• Experience working with OpenAPI, ReadMe, and documentation.
• Excited to learn more about the securities industry.

We Offer

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card
• Professional Development: Opportunities for technical growth, conference attendance, and industry recognition.
• Work-Life Balance: Flexible remote work arrangements with async-first practices.
• Global Impact: Work with awesome hard-working people, super smart and cool clients, and innovative partners from around the world.

About the Company

Alpacaの日本事業は、米国株式への需要の高まりと差別化された商品提供により急速に成長しています。自社開発のブローカレッジ・インフラにより、手頃なサービスを提供しながら、端株取引や24/5の時間外取引といった革新的な顧客体験を実現し、日本市場で高い評価を得ています。

顧客基盤の拡大に伴い、ローカライズされた高品質なサポートの提供が最優先事項となっています。日本の金融機関やエンタープライズ・パートナーとの信頼構築には、技術的な卓越性だけでなく、現地の商習慣・コミュニケーションスタイル・顧客の期待に対する深い理解が求められます。

本ポジションは、日本のエンタープライズ顧客に対する主要な技術パートナーとして、プリセールスの技術コンサルティングから、オンボーディング・API連携支援、既存顧客への継続的なテクニカルアカウントマネジメントまで、顧客ライフサイクル全体を担います。日本およびグローバルのSales・Engineering・Productチームと緊密に連携し、顧客がAlpacaプラットフォーム上で成功裏に構築・拡大できるよう支援します。