Forward Deployed Engineer

BlueCrest Capital Management; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

BlueCrest Capital Management is seeking an experienced software engineer to join the AI Team of Front Office Technology in London. You will build AI-driven, production-grade solutions integrated with the firm’s standard tooling and governance framework.

You will work closely with PMs, traders and quants to scope pod use cases, implement scalable MCP-based components, and push back when needed to ensure value and safety in a regulated trading environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in software engineering.
• Direct front office experience at a hedge fund or bank, with traders/PMs.
• Hands-on experience building LLM applications: retrieval (RAG), tools, agents, context engineering, and evaluation of output quality.
• Heavy daily use of agentic coding tools with understanding of failures and review processes.
• Shipping production systems: APIs, containers, CI/CD and cloud (Azure or Kubernetes preferred).
• Ability to turn loosely defined desk requests into scoped deliverables and push back when needed.

Responsibilities

• Scope pod use cases that need engineering build, working with PMs, traders and quants.
• Build production-grade applications using AI-assisted development on the firm’s standard tooling.
• Pair with pod developers on live builds and share best practices in design, code review, testing and safe use of agentic tools.
• Ensure pods remain maintainable and not dependency-heavy on individuals.
• Turn recurring pod requirements into reusable MCP servers, skills, agents and templates.
• Feed engineering gaps into the team’s roadmap.
• Build entitlements, per-user identity, audit and evaluation into every solution from day one.
• Graduate successful applications to Technology ownership with evals, docs and handover.
• Track business impact: time saved, risk reduced, decisions supported.

Skills

Python

SQL

Front office experience

LLM apps

Agentic coding tools

CI/CD

Cloud (Azure)

Kubernetes

Desk-to-deliverables

Tools

Azure

Kubernetes

Job description

Department Overview:

The AI Team, part of Front Office Technology, builds the governed foundation for AI across the firm: secure access to firm data and knowledge, standard tooling, reusable AI services, and the controls that let AI be used safely in a regulated trading environment.

Our model is simple. Pods build close to the problem, Technology provides the paved road, and successful applications graduate into formal Technology ownership as they grow in importance.

Department Overview:

The AI Team, part of Front Office Technology, builds the governed foundation for AI across the firm: secure access to firm data and knowledge, standard tooling, reusable AI services, and the controls that let AI be used safely in a regulated trading environment.

Our model is simple. Pods build close to the problem, Technology provides the paved road, and successful applications graduate into formal Technology ownership as they grow in importance.

Key Responsibilities

Embedded delivery

• Scope pod use cases that need engineering build, working directly with PMs, traders and quants.
• Build production-grade applications using AI-assisted development (e.g. Claude Code) on the firm’s standard AI tooling: templates, CI/CD, the Institutional Knowledge Layer, MCP services and shared libraries.

Engineering standards in the pod

• Pair with pod developers on live builds, sharing good practice in design, code review, testing and safe use of agentic coding tools.
• Leave the pod able to extend and maintain what has been built, rather than dependent on you.

Shared capability and reuse

• Turn repeated pod requirements into reusable MCP servers, skills, agents and templates, available for use across the firm.
• Feed engineering gaps and requirements directly into the team’s roadmap.

Governance and graduation

• Build entitlements, per-user identity, audit and evaluation into every solution from day one.
• Take successful applications through graduation to Technology ownership, including evals, documentation and operational handover.

Business outcomes

• Assist in tracking the business impact of what you deliver: time saved, risk reduced, decisions supported.

Key Competencies:

You are an experienced engineer who is credible on a trading desk. You understand how PMs and traders work, speak their language, and are comfortable challenging requests in order to deliver what actually adds value.

You build quickly with AI tools but hold yourself to production standards: tested, governed, maintainable and reviewable. You understand the limitations of LLMs and design around them rather than over-promising.

You look beyond the immediate request, spotting when a pod’s problem is really a firm-wide one and building it once so others can reuse it. You are comfortable with ambiguity, take ownership, and measure success by business outcomes.

Key Experience and Qualifications:

The ideal applicant will have:

Essential

• 5+ years in software engineering, with strong Python and SQL.
• Direct front office experience at a hedge fund or bank, working day to day with traders or PMs, ideally in Rates or Emerging Markets.
• Hands-on experience building LLM applications: retrieval (RAG), tool use and agents, context engineering, and evaluation of output quality.
• Heavy daily use of agentic coding tools, with a clear view of where they fail and how to review their output.
• A track record of shipping production systems: APIs, containers, CI/CD and cloud (Azure or Kubernetes preferred).
• The ability to turn loosely defined desk requests into scoped deliverables, and the confidence to push back when something should not be built.

Desirable

• Building MCP servers or similar tool integrations.
• Market data and time-series work (e.g. Bloomberg, Snowflake).
• Integrating where required with existing front office tooling and working effectively with the teams that support them.

BlueCrest is committed to providing an inclusive environment for its workforce. As an employer, we provide equal opportunities to all people regardless of their gender, marital or civil partnership status, race, religion or ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation or nationality.