Low-Latency C++ Engineer

Oxford Knight; England; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Oxford Knight is collaborating with world-leading quantitative trading firms to hire exceptional C++ engineers for performance-critical trading teams. You will work across market data, connectivity, execution, order books, and real-time risk infrastructure to push latency, throughput, and reliability to new levels.

The role spans the stack—from application code to OS and kernel considerations—with ownership of systems running live in production.

Qualifications

• Proficient in modern C++ and CS fundamentals.
• Strong knowledge of concurrency, memory, and performance.
• Familiarity with Linux and systems programming.
• Interest in hardware-level performance optimization.

Responsibilities

• Design high-performance C++ trading systems.
• Optimize latency and throughput on critical paths.
• Work on multithreading, concurrency, and lock-free code.
• Handle network and systems programming tasks.
• Profile CPU, memory, and cache usage.
• Engage with real-time market data and execution infra.
• Reduce jitter and tail latency.
• Take ownership of live production systems.

Skills

Modern C++ proficiency

Concurrency

Linux knowledge

Hardware-level performance interest

Job description

I’m working with several of the world’s leading quantitative trading firms and market makers looking to hire exceptional C++ engineers into performance-critical trading teams.

These are engineering environments where performance genuinely matters. Depending on the team, you could be working across market data, exchange connectivity, execution, order books, real-time risk or the core infrastructure underpinning automated trading.

The problems span the entire stack: application code, operating systems, networking and modern CPU architecture. Current teams across the market are working on systems processing enormous volumes of real-time market data while continuously pushing latency, throughput and reliability.

The work can include:

• Designing high-performance C++ trading systems
• Optimising critical paths for latency and throughput
• Multithreading, concurrency and lock-free programming
• Network and systems programming
• CPU/cache/memory optimisation and profiling
• Real-time market data and execution infrastructure
• Measuring and eliminating jitter and tail latency
• Taking ownership of systems running live in production

Looking for:

• Excellent modern C++ and computer science fundamentals
• Strong understanding of concurrency, memory and performance
• Linux/systems knowledge
• An interest in understanding performance all the way down to the hardware

Trading experience is useful but absolutely not essential. Some of my clients actively like engineers coming from highly technical environments outside finance.

These firms offer some of the strongest engineering problems and compensation available anywhere in software.

Whilst we carefully review all applications, to all jobs, due to the high volume of applications we receive it is not possible to respond to those who have not been successful.