Core Data Engineer

Flow Traders; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flow Academy

Catered lunch

On-site gym

Massages

Company trips

Global rotations

Job summary

Flow Traders is seeking a Core Data Engineer to own end-to-end data product lifecycles, including Security Master, ETF compositions, high‑resolution histories, and trades records. You will design and monitor automated pipelines so users across the firm have reliable data when needed.

You will collaborate with teams to optimize data sources, ensure data quality in production, and scale data platforms to support quantitative trading growth.

Qualifications

• Analytics or data engineering experience in a high-growth setting.
• Strong data modelling and data quality practice with contracts and lineage.
• Proficient in Python and SQL with production experience.
• Experience with large datasets and modern cloud data stacks.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end lifecycle of core data products and pipelines.
• Develop quality checks and automate data processing steps.
• Ensure data quality and establish robust monitoring and alerts.
• Build foundations: reference data, instrument identifiers, feeds.
• Maintain high availability across time zones for critical pipelines.

Skills

Data engineering

Data modelling

Python

SQL

Big data

Production ownership

Stakeholder collaboration

5+ years

Tools

Airflow

Kafka

GCP (GKE, Dataproc, BigQuery)

Spark/Databricks

dbt

Polars

Pandas

NiFi

Job description

Flow Traders is looking for a Core Data Engineer to own the end-to-end lifecycle of our most fundamental data products, including our Security Master; our reconciled ETF Compositions; high-resolution historical market data; and records of our trades, orders, quotes, and inquiries. High-quality data is the cornerstone of Flow Traders' strategic direction - beyond reducing complexity and BAU for stakeholders across the organization, quality data is a key requirement for our growth of quantitative trading styles.

Specifically, you will craft and execute the blueprint for these products, leveraging our Data Platform to build and monitor automated pipelines which ensure that users across the organization have reliable data at their fingertips when they need it. Further, you will become an expert in these data sets, leveraging that knowledge to optimize our use of the data we have and explore new sources for additional value. Finally, you will constantly collaborate with teams across the organization to ensure that our in-house systems are designed with data in mind, streamline additional data-related workflows, and work with stakeholders to maximize the value they extract from our data.

As the architect and guardian of our most valuable data, you will have a unique opportunity to make your mark on Flow Traders. You will be accountable for delivering these data products at an exceptional level of quality, ensuring that they are not only timely and pristine, but powerful enough to drive Flow Traders' future growth. Ultimately, your work will not only provide highly visible benefits that every division feels every day, but it will also deliver one of the most important building blocks to the firm's strategic growth for the years to come.

What you will do

• Craft datasets with quants. Take an underspecified research question and turn it into the right dataset: aligned, adjusted, point-in-time correct, documented, and reproducible.
• Develop and own the end-to-end lifecycle of these data products. Build and maintain pipelines, develop quality checks, correct day-to-day operational issues, and systematize/automate manual processing steps
• Own data quality where it matters. Design the checks and alerts that catch the problems that would actually hurt a strategy, and deliberately leave out the ones that are just noise.
• Build shared foundations. Reference data, instrument identifiers, corporate actions and vendor feeds that every researcher and trading desk depends on.
• Keep critical pipelines running. Markets in several regions, and digital asset markets that never close, depend on this data. You will be part of a team that supports it across time zones.

What you need to succeed

Required

• Analytics or data engineering experience, ideally at a startup or scale-up through a growth phase
• Strong data modelling and data quality practice: tests, contracts, lineage, observability in production
• Strong proficiency in Python (ideally familiarity with another statically-typed language)
• Working proficiency with SQL and relational databases, and version control systems
• Demonstrated ability to work with large datasets and familiarity with big data solutions
• You have owned something in production, not only built it
• You enjoy working directly with the people who use your data
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to balance individual stakeholder requirements with data quality, consistency, and broad applicability
• Over 5 years experience working in data engineering

Strongly Preferred

• Experience with financial data: prices, market data, transactions, instruments
• Familiarity with point-in-time data, look-ahead bias and survivorship bias
• Experience with a modern cloud data stack, such as Spark or Databricks, dbt, a cloud warehouse, and orchestration
• Experience with Airflow, Kafka, and GCP (esp. GKE, Dataproc, and Big Query), strongly preferred
• Experience with Polars, Pandas, Spark, Apache Beam, Apache NiFi
• Experience at a trading firm, systematic fund, brokerage, crypto exchange or market data company
• On-call or incident response experience

What We Offer

At Flow Traders, we create the conditions for hard-working, high-performing people to do their best work. From a thorough onboarding and ongoing access to Flow Academy, to latest technology and a collaborative, non-hierarchical culture, we give you the tools, ownership, and support to move fast and drive outcomes. We keep a close-knit, small-company feel while offering competitive salary, annual discretionary profit share, and comprehensive benefits, so talent can grow here, and stay here. See our benefits below:

• Flow Academy and opportunities to attend domain-related conferences
• Daily catered lunch, great coffee, and a fully stocked kitchen and snack bar
• In-house Bar and Lounge with arcade, table tennis, billiards, and game consoles
• Company boat
• In-house gym and sessions with our nutritionist or personal trainer
• Bi-weekly massages
• Annual company trip and a variety of events throughout the year, such as the New Years Event
• Global rotations across our offices worldwide
• and more

Flow Traders does not accept unsolicited resumes from any professional staffing or search firms. All resumes, and any other information identifying potential candidates, submitted to any employee at Flow Traders via-email, the Internet or directly without a valid and signed search agreement will be deemed free to contact by Flow Traders without any restrictions and no placement fee of any kind will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Flow Traders.