"We Are Definitely Engineering-First" at Alpaca
Product Engineer Jackson To shares his thoughts about Alpaca's mission statement, its financial education platform, and the developer-centered work environment.
You can’t talk to Jackson To without being impressed by his passion for Alpaca.
Our mission statement is to enable financial access around the world.
“We provide the infrastructure so that anyone, anywhere, can have access to financial services,” Jackson explained, “be it trading stocks or onboarding correspondents. . . . At the core of it right now, our big focus, really is on trading equities and how you can access international markets through Alpaca.”
In addition to delivering access to international markets through its platform, Alpaca itself is an international company. Its founders originally came from Japan, though they now live in the US, and the company employs 150 workers in 25 countries.
In recent years its founders have returned their attention to Japan, and Jackson took advantage of the moment. After speaking to the company’s CTO, he was able to arrange a transfer from Canada to Tokyo in 2023.
“I’m from Hong Kong [originally],” said Jackson, “not from Canada. So Hong Kong is pretty similar to Japan, where it’s a very traditional Asian city, fast-paced . . . and I thought it was a good chance for me to live in a similar type of environment without going home.”
He took the plunge even though at the time he spoke “zero, absolutely zero” Japanese. “I literally just moved on a whim. I just thought, you know, nothing like a challenge, like throwing yourself into deep water.
“I would say you don’t really need Japanese to work at our company. So it wasn’t really a big deal.”
Now, Jackson is working on the payments team for Alpaca, which handles anything related to funding, reconciliation, bank integrations, ledger integrations, and money movement in general. This is a critical role, given how much money the Alpaca platform now manages.
We’re managing billions of dollars of customer assets which I believe is a significant milestone.
How has Alpaca achieved this level of success? For starters, they cater to both business clients and personal consumers. For other businesses, they provide the infrastructure and help clients build on top of their APIs.
But Alpaca also runs a platform of its own, which both opens up financial markets to average consumers, and gives them the opportunity to experiment.
“That’s our sandbox feature. It’s enabled for all accounts,” Jackson explained. “The idea here is that I want to enable you to test risk-free. A common concern in the industry revolves around questions like, ‘Will the platform perform as expected? Is my investment secure? Will it deliver the results I anticipate?’”
But anyone who opens an account on Alpaca is automatically given a ‘paper account’ to practice trading on real markets, with real data.
“So if you feel like your [market] strategy would work from what you’ve learned,” said Jackson, “or you just want to test out some trends that you’ve learned from a book, we have the environment for that. We make it easy so you can move from that environment to a real environment pretty easily as well.”
In addition to possessing a unique platform, Alpaca has a strong developer-driven work culture, which may be another key to the company’s success. “We are definitely engineering-first,” said Jackson. And while many companies claim to have a “flat organization,” Alpaca interprets the lack of hierarchy a bit differently than most.
“I would say everyone in the company is at least a senior,” said Jackson.
We have certain expectations of you as a senior engineer. That means you’re responsible for your own development. You’re proactive about observability and making sure that things are maintainable.
In exchange for this proactivity, Alpaca offers its developers enormous flexibility in terms of schedule, work assignments, and teams. To help its global employees collaborate smoothly, conversations tend to be held asynchronously, and there are no core hours.
“We have the daily scrum,” said Jackson. “The daily scrum is set based on the team’s most available time slot. So at least for my team, we have it at nighttime in Japan, but it’s only like 30 minutes, 15 minutes, right? . . . But we also don’t really have very strict hours.”
For Jackson, this policy works well. “A big part of being flexible is that you work as you need. This doesn’t mean you can slack off, but I think some days I put in more time than others. A big part of that is just because I’m pretty invested in the features I built. So that keeps me excited. It keeps me motivated to build the things.”
You also get to choose what you get to build, usually.
The teams at Alpaca range from four to eight members, and it’s always possible for a developer to switch between teams. Jackson offered an example.
“It’s not uncommon for you to, [after] a couple of months in this team, realize maybe it’s not really suited to you, and then you’ll be moved to another team. A good example is, we had a member join recently that was on the ledger team. And then . . . he wanted to move and he was also curious about platform engineering.
“After six months, he ended up moving to the platform team. So we don’t really have a set structure of once you join a team, you stay there.”
This includes stepping into leadership roles. “I think a big part of what Alpaca does really well is, they give you the opportunity to let you prove yourself, kind of like reevaluate yourself on where you are. So you always have the opportunity to lead your own projects, to lead your own teams.”
But that doesn’t mean Alpaca won’t let its developers reverse course if needed. “And, you know, sometimes you’ll notice yourself that it just doesn’t work and it’s not like they’ll just cut you off, right? They’ll re-scope you back, give you some extra time, and then let you try again some other future [time].”
Even if they switch teams, however, Jackson believes that most Alpaca developers remain invested in the features they’ve previously built.
“I wasn’t always on the payments team,” he explained. “This has been my third team now. So I started off in the North American platform team. And then we had a restructure. . . . Then I was on a crypto team, which has a big focus on the crypto initiatives we have for our company. And now I’m on the payments team.
“I would say my work obviously switches here and there, but a big focus, at least for us, is, you’re an owner for whatever you build, and [that] doesn’t stop as soon as you change teams, right? I think you stay an owner to the end.”
That sense of ownership, Jackson believes, “is the biggest thing that separates Alpaca and other tech companies. ‘Ownership’ as in everyone will proactively find ways to improve our product regardless of their scope. We are all aligned on the same mission statement regardless of location, and everyone is set on delivering high-quality and high-impact results.”
We’re always exploring and never satisfied with ‘just enough.’ When problems get tough, we get energized and become even more laser-focused. We’re keen on that last 10% of effort and believe that the details do matter.
One of the ways this shows up on a day-to-day basis is via refactoring. “I noticed,” said Jackson, “that most of our engineers, if they see something that they feel is not up to par, they’ll end up tackling it in the ticket they’re tracking as well.”
Taking the initiative to do “chores” like refactoring to prevent tech debt is a priority for Alpaca developers. “For example, if you’re assigned a bug, and you touch this part and then you realize, well, this part also needs some refactoring . . . [we’ll say] ‘Let’s clean it up and keep it as maintainable as we can while we develop.’”
This practice aligns closely with Alpaca’s overall policy. “Being self-directed is key,” said Jackson. “It’s better to look for work, versus to be assigned work.”
In general, Alpaca’s work environment suits developers who prefer to work independently. “I think at least for us, flexibility is the thing here, but flexibility comes with a cost sometimes. You won’t have maybe the environment you’re looking for, if you’re someone who really wants that camaraderie you find at the office, where it’s like you come together, do Mob Programming, [and] perform on a day-to-day basis. We’re definitely not the right place for that.”
We’re really more focused on getting a couple of heads together and getting things done.
Ambitious, career-oriented developers will also thrive at Alpaca. “A big part really is how much you want it, right?” said Jackson. “I think we definitely do a really good job giving to people who really push hard.
“So I think, if you’re looking for opportunities, there are always opportunities for you.”
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