Desk Software Engineer (Commodities & Derivatives)

NJF Global Holdings Ltd; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

NJF Global Holdings Ltd seeks a Desk Software Engineer to partner with senior commodity traders on a fast-paced trading desk. The role emphasizes algorithmic thinking, practical problem-solving, and robust system design rather than pure modeling.

You will work with real-world commodity markets—shipping routes, natural gas networks, and refinery operations—ingesting chaotic telemetry to surface causal relationships and build production-grade analytical tools that drive real-time PnL.

Qualifications

• 3–10 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Top-20 university degree preferred.
• Proven track record building production systems.
• Experience with Python data pipelines and trading desk context is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build data ingestion pipelines and robust APIs to capture noisy data in real time.
• Design and implement predictive models for downstream impacts across assets and supply chains.
• Rewrite prototypes into production-grade, low-latency systems end-to-end with traders.
• Write high-performance Python code, optimize memory, and utilize asyncio for scalability.

Skills

Python

Data structures & algorithms

Problem solving

Big-O analysis

Education

Top-20 university degree

Tools

Pandas

Polars

NumPy

Dask

FastAPI

React

Job description

• Location: On-site (Remote work is not supported; desk presence is mandatory)
• Experience Level: 3 to 10 years of professional software engineering experience (Ideal target: ~6 years)
• Education Pedigree: Top-tier academic background (Top-20 university institution preferred)

Role Summary

We are seeking a high-caliber Desk Software Engineer to partner directly with senior commodity traders on an active, fast-paced trading desk. This position prioritizes algorithmic thinking, practical problem-solving, and robust system design over pure quantitative modeling.

You will be dealing with real-world physical commodity markets—such as shipping routes, maritime chokepoints, natural gas networks, and refinery operations that have equities, futures, and derivatives attached. Your mission is to ingest the chaotic telemetry of the physical world, surface causal relationships, and build production-grade analytical tools that directly drive real-time PnL.

Key Responsibilities

• Speed-to-Insight Data Pipelines: Build custom web scrapers, automated ingestion pipelines, and robust APIs to capture noisy, malformed data the instant it drops. Clean, weight, and blend this data to uncover causal relationships before the broader market recognizes a shift in the status quo.
• Chain-Effect Prediction: Design and implement predictive models that map out downstream impacts across correlated assets, equities, derivatives, and complex supply chain networks.
• Scale the Trader's Edge: Traders spot market anomalies and rapidly prototype ideas in Python (often laden with edge cases and bugs). You will take these prototypes apart, work through the core logic directly with the trader, and hand-craft clean, optimized, production-grade systems from scratch—owning them end-to-end without relying on AI code generation shortcuts.
• High-Performance Engineering: Write efficient, production-grade Python code that handles massive datasets. Optimize memory management, bypass GIL bottlenecks, vectorize calculations, and leverage asyncio and FastAPI for low-friction execution.
• Languages & Data Processing: Python (Pandas, Polars, NumPy, Dask)
• Interfaces: React

Real-World Pain Points You Will Solve

To thrive on this desk, you must be prepared to tackle the specific operational friction that kills generic software projects:

• The "Garbage-In, Reality-Out" Problem: Incoming data feeds from websites, ship trackers, and sensor networks are notoriously malformed, delayed, or missing. You will build resilient parsing architectures that turn messy, real-world chaos into pristine analytical streams.
• Bridging the Prototype-to-Production Gap: Traders move fast and break things to catch a fleeting market anomaly. You will frequently inherit spaghetti code full of edge cases and translate it into robust, scalable, low‑latency production systems without losing the underlying trading logic.
• Combating Scale Bottlenecks & GIL Lag: As datasets balloon across multiple commodity verticals, naive Python code grinds to a halt. You will constantly diagnose memory limits, optimize data structures, and vectorize calculations to keep processing speeds ahead of the market.
• Balancing Technical Debt vs. Speed-to-Alpha: In a fast‑twitch trading environment, building the right thing next week is useless if the market moves today. You will use sharp commercial acumen to ruthlessly prioritize features, weighing engineering hours directly against tangible PnL impact.

Candidate Profile & Requirements

• Experience & Stability (3–10 Years, Ideal: 6): You have proven industry experience and a stable track record. We are looking for builders who have stayed put long enough to see successful systems through to production—no serial job-hoppers.
• Big Tech Pedigree: You do not need a background in finance or commodities, but you must bring serious engineering chops from a top‑tier tech environment where you built something substantial.
• Academic Excellence & Competitive Drive: We heavily index for top-20 university degrees and top academic performance. We love multidisciplinary backgrounds (e.g., double/triple majors in Computer Science, Math, and Economics), CS graduates who competed in math competitions, and individuals who earned prizes for academic excellence. This signals a fierce, competitive mindset in intellectually demanding areas, without veering into ivory-tower academia.
• An Engineer’s Engineer: You possess a deep command of data structures and algorithms. You can effortlessly debate Big O complexity, dive into the weeds on time‑series lags and lead‑lag market dynamics, and crush all mid‑level and a majority of hard‑level LeetCode problems. Efficiency is your edge.
• Maturity & Grit: You bring a balance of raw, high-intensity drive and seasoned professional maturity. Ego and fragility have no place here.
• Commercial Acumen: You can run a back‑of‑the‑envelope ROI calculation to determine if a project is worth pursuing. You weigh development hours directly against PnL generation to ensure engineering resources are optimized.
• Hungry & Fast‑Twitch: You are genuinely curious about how physical markets work under the hood and thrive in a high‑octane, collaborative, in‑office environment.