Senior HFT Engineer

Our client is a highly sophisticated quantitative trading firm operating across a broad range of exchange-traded asset classes and global markets. With offices spanning North America, Europe and offshore financial centres, the business combines deep quantitative research with cutting-edge engineering to develop and deploy systematic trading strategies across multiple time horizons.

The environment is made up of highly analytical engineers, researchers and technologists from backgrounds including computer science, mathematics, engineering and physics, all working together to solve complex technical and quantitative challenges at scale.

They are currently looking to hire a Senior C++ Engineer to join their core trading technology team in London.

This position will focus on the development and optimisation of high-performance, low-latency trading systems that underpin live trading, market connectivity and quantitative research workflows across the business.

You will work closely with quantitative researchers and senior engineers to design and build scalable trading infrastructure, whilst contributing to architecture decisions across networking, hardware utilisation and performance engineering.

The role offers strong ownership and exposure to some of the most technically challenging problems within systematic trading and low-latency engineering.

• Develop and optimise C++ software for high-performance trading systems
• Build infrastructure supporting research, backtesting and live trading workflows
• Work closely with quantitative researchers and engineering teams on trading-related tooling
• Design low-latency distributed systems with strong focus on performance and reliability
• Contribute to architecture decisions across networking, CPU utilisation and hardware optimisation
• Analyse and improve system performance through profiling, benchmarking and optimisation techniques
• Work across market connectivity and exchange-facing infrastructure
• Strong commercial experience with modern C++
• Background building high-performance or low-latency systems
• Strong Linux systems and network programming knowledge
• Understanding of CPU architecture and performance optimisation techniques
• Experience with multithreading, concurrency and lock-free programming
• Experience working with packet capture, packet replay or low-level network analysis tooling
• Exposure to market data protocols or exchange connectivity is highly beneficial
• Financial services or trading systems experience is advantageous but not essential

This is an office-first engineering environment built around collaboration, technical excellence and continuous learning. The team are looking for highly motivated engineers who enjoy solving difficult technical problems and operating within fast-paced, performance-driven environments.

The role offers highly competitive compensation alongside strong long-term growth opportunities within a technically elite trading environment.

Contact Ciara Clarke at Harrington Starr for a confidential discussion on this role.