Developer

Alvar; City Of London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Alvar Financial Services seeks an experienced Python developer to build robust data pipelines and transform financial filings into structured data. You will orchestrate data feeds, ensure data quality, and extend backend APIs for a scalable SaaS platform.

The role emphasizes production-grade scripting, documentation, testing, and collaboration with analytics and engineering teams in a regulated financial services context.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Data Science, IT, Electrical Engineering or equivalent experience.
• Experience working in a regulated financial services industry is preferable but not essential.
• Proactive approach towards identifying opportunities for improvement and delivering solutions.

Responsibilities

• Bulletproof script development: build reliable, production grade scripts from defined specifications.
• Data orchestration and integration: develop and own orchestration scripts that integrate multiple data feeds into the existing point in time database.
• Document analysis engines: develop engines that turn financial filings into structured, queryable data with LLM-assisted extraction where appropriate.
• Testing to production migration: manage path from development to production with staged testing and zero disruption to live processes.
• Data hygiene, processing and transformation: apply data hygiene including deduplication and mapping with point in time integrity.
• Automation and optimisation: automate data workflows and implement data quality checks to catch issues early.
• Documentation and code quality: write well-documented, maintainable code with unit tests and thorough docs.
• Foundation development: contribute to backend API development and database integration for scalable SaaS.
• Ad hoc duties as required.

Skills

Python

Pandas

NumPy

SQL

Data cleaning

Pipeline orchestration

LLM API

Testing

Documentation

Scripting

Education

CS/Data Science/IT/EE degree

Tools

PostgreSQL

Docker

Job description

Role:

We are looking for an experienced, highly motivated Python developer with expertise in building robust data pipelines, creating and manipulating DataFrames, and turning defined specifications into reliable, production grade scripts. The role centres on developing and orchestrating the data infrastructure behind a systematic research platform: document analysis engines that extract structured data from financial filings and disclosures, integrated with market and transaction datasets into a point in time research database. This is a genuine opportunity to extend into quantitative research and to help build the foundation for full stack, next gen SaaS service offerings.

Key Responsibilities:

• Bulletproof script development: build reliable, production grade scripts from defined specifications.
• Data orchestration and integration: develop and own the orchestration scripts that integrate multiple data feeds (document analysis output, transaction data, market data) into the existing point in time database on a reliable schedule, continuously improving the dataset’s quality and coverage.
• Document analysis engines: develop and improve engines that turn financial filings and disclosures into structured, queryable data, including LLM assisted extraction where appropriate.
• Testing to production migration: own the path from development to production, testing rigorously in a staging environment before migrating scripts to the production server with proper versioning, rollback capability and zero disruption to live processes.
• Data hygiene, processing and transformation: apply disciplined data hygiene across sources, including deduplication, entity and identifier mapping, and handling of missing or malformed values, with close attention to point in time integrity (as of date versioning, no look ahead bias, clean handling of revisions).
• Automation and optimisation: automate data workflows and build in data quality checks so parsing failures, gaps or stale data are caught before they reach research.
• Documentation and code quality: write well documented, maintainable code with unit tests covering data processing and integration scripts. Clear, thorough documentation of what’s built, how it works and how to run it is a core part of the role, so work can be understood, maintained and handed over by others.
• Foundation development: contribute to backend API development, user authentication and database integration, laying groundwork for a scalable SaaS platform.
• Any other ad hoc duties that may be required from time to time

Technical Requirements:

• Proven experience with Python, especially Pandas and NumPy
• Mastery of SQL and PostgreSQL: schema design, complex queries, indexing and performance optimisation, beyond basic querying
• Experience with pipeline orchestration and scheduling
• Proven ability to deliver reliable, tested scripts against a written specification, and to migrate them cleanly from a test environment to a production server
• Strong data hygiene, processing and cleaning skills, including experience with messy real world data (documents, filings, PDFs, HTML, third party APIs)
• A habit of documenting your own work thoroughly, so others can understand, maintain and build on it
• LLM API experience for structured data extraction, and general comfort working with AI tools and prompting.
• An understanding of point in time data is a strong plus

Also desirable:

experience with vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant or similar); machine learning experience (PyTorch, TensorFlow, XGBoost/LightGBM) for building, maintaining and extending existing models; Bloomberg API integration to Python; data science/statistics, signal research, backtesting or factor modelling; full stack familiarity (Flask, Django, FastAPI); SaaS build/deploy on cloud (Docker, AWS or similar); an understanding of Java; and experience in quantitative finance or with financial market data.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Data Science, IT, Electrical Engineering or equivalent experience is essential
• Experience working in a regulated financial services industry, preferable but not essential
• Proactive approach towards identifying opportunities for improvement and taking ownership to deliver solutions

About Us

Alvar Financial Services is a boutique firm offering a variety of investment and trading services through its business lines - Equity Markets for professional and institutional clients, Research Services and Electronic Global Retail Platform for private clients. Our small community and flat structure empowers our people to grow and create unconstrained ideas within their field of expertise, driving innovation and mastery in their work. We all work together as one to achieve our vision of being a trusted partner to our clients, providing unrivalled insights and a collaborative high touch service.

Commitment To Diversity

At Alvar, we believe that every voice matters. We strive to create a mindful and respectful environment where everyone can bring their authentic self to work, and experience a culture that is free of harassment, racism, and discrimination. That’s why we are committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and are a proud equal opportunity employer. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law. This policy applies to all employment practices within our organisation, including, but not limited to, hiring, recruiting, promotion, termination, layoff, and leave of absence.

Alvar Financial Services is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our job application procedures for individuals with disabilities. Please inform our HR Team via email [e-mail] if you need any assistance completing any forms or to otherwise participate in the application process.