KDB Engineer

Harrington Starr; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Harrington Starr is partnering with a specialist financial technology consultancy to hire a KDB+ Engineer. This hands-on role focuses on building high-performance KDB+ and q applications for time-series data and large-scale financial systems.

You will design, develop and optimise production-grade architectures, collaborate with engineering and business teams, and contribute to reliability, scalability and best practices across the development lifecycle.

Qualifications

• Strong commercial experience with KDB+.
• Excellent q programming skills and a solid understanding of time-series data.
• Experience building and supporting KDB+ applications in production.
• Strong Unix/Linux skills and scripting experience.
• A focus on writing clean, efficient and highly performant code.
• Experience working within capital markets or financial technology.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop and optimise high-performance KDB+ and q applications.
• Work with large-scale time-series datasets, including real-time and historical financial data.
• Help design and implement scalable KDB+ architectures for production environments.
• Develop, test, support and maintain applications throughout the full development lifecycle.
• Work closely with engineering and business teams to understand requirements and deliver efficient technical solutions.
• Troubleshoot performance and production issues, continually improving system reliability and efficiency.
• Contribute to development standards, best practices and technical decision‑making.

Skills

KDB+

q programming

Time-series data

Unix/Linux

Scripting

Production support

Performance optimisation

Financial markets

Communication

Job description

I’m working with a specialist financial technology consultancy that is looking to hire a KDB+ Engineer to join their growing engineering team.

This is a hands‑on role for a strong KDB+ developer who enjoys working with high-performance technology, complex time-series data and large-scale financial systems. You’ll have the opportunity to work across technically challenging projects, helping design, develop and optimise KDB+ solutions used within financial markets.

The role:

• Design, develop and optimise high-performance KDB+ and q applications


• Work with large-scale time-series datasets, including real-time and historical financial data


• Help design and implement scalable KDB+ architectures for production environments


• Develop, test, support and maintain applications throughout the full development lifecycle


• Work closely with engineering and business teams to understand requirements and deliver efficient technical solutions


• Troubleshoot performance and production issues, continually improving system reliability and efficiency


• Contribute to development standards, best practices and technical decision‑making

What they’re looking for:

• Strong commercial experience with KDB+


• Excellent q programming skills and a solid understanding of time‑series data


• Experience building and supporting KDB+ applications in production


• Strong Unix/Linux skills and scripting experience


• A genuine focus on writing clean, efficient and highly performant code


• Experience working within capital markets, investment banking or financial technology


• Good communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Any experience with Python, cloud platforms, tick data, real‑time analytics or electronic trading would be advantageous.