Lead Software Engineer, Real-time Risk (Python)

Winston Fox; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 500,000 - 700,000; Full time

Job summary

Global Hedge Fund in London is seeking an exceptional Software Engineer to join the Risk technology team. This is not a traditional software role; you will own and shape real-time data pipelines, distributed systems, and cloud-native infrastructure to support risk and investment decision making.

You will work directly with Risk and Treasury users, build high-performance platforms, and help raise engineering standards across the function.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience.
• Exceptional programming ability in Python and SQL.
• Experience with distributed systems, system design and architecture.
• Experience with messaging/streaming technologies such as Kafka.
• Data engineering experience: pipelines, relational databases and large-scale data processing.

Responsibilities

• Designing and evolving high-performance data pipelines and real-time applications.
• Engineering systems capable of real-time processing and horizontal scale-out.
• Working with distributed systems, messaging and event-driven architectures.
• Building robust data platforms across databases, pipelines and Lakehouse tech.
• Improving performance, resilience, observability and reliability of critical systems.

Skills

Python

SQL

Distributed systems

System design

Communication

Leadership experience

Project ownership

Education

CS degree from a reputable university

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Kafka

Airflow

Dagster

Job description

Global Hedge Fund | London | £500k - £700k PA Compensation (please read the spec before applying)

We are searching for an exceptional Software Engineerto join the Risk team at one of the world's leading and most technologically sophisticated hedge funds.

This is not a traditional software engineering position.

You will join a highly technical engineering team sitting at the heart of the firm’s investment and risk architecture, building the platforms and tools used by Risk and Investment professionals to understand portfolios, monitor exposures and make better, faster decisions.

The firm manages many billions in AUM, and it runs systematic and fundamental strategies globally. It is considered to be one of the tier-one global hedge funds with an elite history and track record.

We are looking for an engineer who can genuinely raise the technical bar.

The Risk Technology team is evolving a sophisticated portfolio research and monitoring platform towards increasingly real-time, distributed and scalable processing. You will work on engineering problems spanning real-time applications, large-scale data processing, distributed systems, data pipelines, cloud-native infrastructure and platform reliability.

This is a role for someone who wants and enjoys genuine ownership. You will work directly with and often be forward-deployed into the core Risk and Treasury teams. You will be expected to build relationships with the business built on trust, and your understanding of the problems they are trying to solve, and then design and engineer the systems and tools that solve them.

In this role, your work will directly contribute to the firm's ability to monitor deployed risk and make informed investment decisions.

What You'll Be Doing

• Working with the team on overall systems architecture design
• Designing, building and evolving high-performance data pipelines and real-time applications
• Engineering systems capable of real-time processing and horizontal scale-out
• Working extensively with distributed systems, messaging and event-driven architectures
• Building robust data platforms spanning relational databases, data pipelines and Lakehouse technologies
• Improving the performance, resilience, observability and reliability of critical systems
• Working with modern cloud, container and microservice infrastructure
• Partnering directly with Risk and Investment users rather than operating several layers removed from the business
• Introducing strong engineering practices and helping raise engineering standards across the Risk function
• Taking meaningful technical ownership rather than simply implementing tickets or maintaining somebody else's architecture
• We want someone with technical leadership experience from the view of project ownership, pushing technical vision, strategy, and architecture, but not team leadership (although there is room for growth in this).
• This is fully hands-on, and we are interested in your engineering excellence, not managing budgets or setting staff kpi's

What We’re Looking For

We are deliberately setting the bar extremely high.

We want to speak with top-tier Software Engineers who combine superb computer science fundamentals with the ability to design, build and operate complex production systems in fast-moving environments.

You are likely to have

• 10+ years of professional experience
• Exceptional programming ability in Python, alongside strong SQL.
• Deep understanding of software engineering, system design, and architecture
• Strong knowledge and experience working on sophisticated distributed systems
• Experience with messaging/streaming technologies such as Kafka
• Data engineering experience: pipelines, relational databases, Lakehouse architectures and large-scale data processing
• Strong modern infrastructure experience using Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, cloud and microservices
• Experience with orchestration technologies such as Airflow or Dagster
• Experience implementing AI into workflows
• A track record of improving performance, scalability, reliability and monitoring
• The intellectual curiosity to challenge existing approaches and find better solutions
• Exceptional communication skills with experience working directly with senior "non-technical" business stakeholders
• Strong project/system ownership experience, from inception to support, without product/project management or business analyst support
• Strong track record delivering solutions at tier one hedge funds, prop traders, or investment banking firms regarded for technology engineering excellence is very desirable. Candidates from tier one technology firms or advanced start-ups who have significant technology achievements are also welcome.
• We expect candidates to be highly educated in computer science or engineering, from highly regarded technology universities.
• A genuine and demonstrable passion for technology and continuous learning (it's not just a day job). This means genuine open source contributions, books/papers, blogs, GitHubs, side projects, sophisticated home labs, meetups, speaking engagements, etc

Why This Role?

The attraction is the combination of engineering depth, business proximity and genuine impact.

You won't be building technology several steps removed from the business. You will work alongside sophisticated Risk and Investment professionals, solving problems where better engineering can materially improve how the firm understands multi-billion dollar portfolios and manages risk.

The culture actively encourages people to challenge consensus, introduce new ideas and execute on them — entrepreneurialism and innovation are explicitly part of how the firm operates.

For an elite engineer, this offers something increasingly difficult to find:

Hard engineering problems. Exceptional colleagues. Huge datasets. Real-time systems. Direct exposure to the investment business. And the freedom to make a genuine technical impact.

Location:

London

Work:

4x days on-premises + 1x day wfh

Visa:

Work visa sponsorship and relocation are available for exceptional candidates from other tier one hedge funds and prop traders

Other:

We cannot consider candidates from consulting/advisory or outsourcing firms. Or candidates with a track record of short role tenure.