Principal Architect, AI & High-Performance Systems

KX; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

KX is seeking a principal-level Forward Deployed Engineer in London to architect AI-enabled data platforms for top-tier banks and markets. You will assess client environments, design high-performance data systems, and lead initiatives from diagnostics to first production outcomes.

You will drive accelerated-compute opportunities, evaluate AI use cases, and create a unified estate across KX tech and customer data. Hybrid work from London preferred.

Qualifications

• Experience in capital-markets front-office systems in production and under real market conditions.
• Ability to design production AI, data-platform or HPC systems at scale.
• Experience benchmarking workloads and diagnosing performance, scalability and cost.

Responsibilities

• Assess the customer environment: run architecture, AI-readiness and workload-performance diagnostics and craft a defensible design.
• Identify accelerated-compute opportunities and prove them with numbers.
• Evaluate AI and agent use cases and define feasible deployments and costs.
• Design a single coherent system spanning KX tech, AI platforms and customer data.
• Map the data estate with quants, data owners and domain experts to leverage data.
• Quantify gains in latency, throughput, scalability and cost to validate deployment.
• Define the engagement hypothesis and how success will be measured.
• Benchmark and prototype on real customer data with publishable results.
• Define the evaluation framework for AI/agent systems before build.
• Lead through to production rather than slide decks; deliver first production outcome.
• Build reusable assets like diagnostics, reference architectures and accelerators.
• Inform the product roadmap with recurring customer requirements.

Skills

Python

C++

Rust

Cloud architecture

Distributed systems

Real-time processing

AI/ML

Q/KDB+

GPU/accelerated compute

Performance debugging

Leadership

Tools

OneTick

ClickHouse

InfluxDB

Arctic

Job description

KX software powers the time-aware data-driven decisions that enable fast-moving companies to outpace competitors, realizing the full potential of their AI investments. The KX platform delivers transformational value by addressing data challenges related to completeness, timeliness and efficiency, ensuring companies understand change over time and can achieve faster, more accurate insights at any scale, cost-effectively.

KX is essential to the operations of the world's top investment banks, aerospace and defence, high-tech manufacturing, healthcare and life sciences, automotive and fleet telematics organizations. The company has established offices and a robust customer base across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Overview Of The Role

This is a principal-level, hands-on architect role with the Forward Deployed Engineering Team at KX. You assess customer environments and design AI-enabled, high-performance data and analytics systems, deciding where KX can create material value across AI, real-time data processing, accelerated computing and infrastructure modernisation.

Working with the most innovative Investment Banks, Hedge Funds Market Makers and exchanges globally, you define how KX and their wider technology estate should work together in this new era of technology disruption. That means understanding their estate properly before proposing anything, being specific about what will get faster or cheaper and by how much, and then staying with it through to the first production outcome. You are the technical authority in the room, and the credibility of the architecture is yours to defend.

About Forward Deployed Engineering

Forward Deployed Engineering is how KX works with its leading customers on their hardest problems. Rather than handing a customer software, we put senior engineers inside their environment, alongside their quants, traders, risk teams and platform engineers, to design, build and prove the thing that solves the problem, and we stay until it runs in production.

The team is deliberately small, senior, high impact and it is being built now, which means the standards, the architecture patterns and the way we work are still open questions. If you would rather set them than inherit them, this is the moment to join.

Key Responsibilities

• Assess the environment: run architecture, AI-readiness and workload-performance diagnostics inside the customer's environment, and turn the findings into a defensible design.
• Identify accelerated-compute opportunities: assess workloads for GPU and accelerated-compute opportunities, and prove the case with numbers.
• Evaluate AI and agent use cases: feasibility, architecture, cost and what it takes to operate them. Saying “not yet, and here's why” is part of the job.
• Design across the estate: one coherent system spanning KX technology, AI platforms and the customer's own data, not four loosely-joined ones.
• Map the data estate: work alongside the customer's quants, data owners and domain specialists to understand the estate and its ontology, and the opportunities to leverage that data.
• Quantify the gains: size the gains in latency, throughput, scalability and cost credibly enough to survive the customer's own engineers.
• Define the engagement hypothesis: define the architecture and what each engagement is trying to prove, and how we will know.
• Benchmark and prototype: benchmarks and rapid prototypes on real customer data, with results you would publish.
• Define the evaluation framework: agree how each AI or agent system will be measured before it is built: golden sets, accuracy and recall, regression tests, and latency and cost benchmarks. Architecture that cannot be evaluated cannot be defended.
• Lead through to production: senior technical leadership through the first production outcome, not a slide deck and a handover.
• Build reusable assets: reusable diagnostics, reference architectures and accelerators so each engagement starts further forward than the last.
• Inform the product roadmap: turn repeated customer requirements into clear inputs for Product and Engineering.

Skills

• Deep understanding of distributed systems, real-time processing, streaming architectures and system performance: you know why something is slow, not just that it is.
• Strong cloud architecture skills and strong Python.
• A working understanding of AI and agent-system architecture: model integration, tools, context, and how enterprise data actually gets to a model safely.
• Credibility with CTOs, Chief Data and AI Officers, platform leaders and senior engineers. You can hold all four conversations in the same week.
• Strong capital-markets experience building front-office systems (trading, pricing, market data, risk or research platforms) in production and under real market conditions.
• A track record designing and delivering production AI, data-platform or high-performance computing systems at scale.
• Practical experience with GPU or other accelerated-compute technologies.
• Experience designing evaluation frameworks for AI systems: agreeing what correct means with domain experts, building golden sets, and measuring accuracy, recall, latency and cost honestly enough to support a deployment decision.
• Experience benchmarking workloads and diagnosing performance, scalability and cost.
• Experience operating in complex, secure or regulated enterprise environments, and the patience that requires.
• Experience with q, kdb+ is highly desirable but not essential. Welcome if you have it; the appetite to become genuinely good at it matters more.
• Equivalent evidence counts. Low-level systems programming in C++, Rust or C, and the performance instincts that come with it: memory layout, cache behaviour, lock-free concurrency, kernel-bypass or FPGA work.
• Depth in another time-series or tick store (OneTick, ClickHouse, InfluxDB, Arctic or an in-house engine), or in array and functional languages (APL, J, OCaml, Haskell, Scala) where the thinking transfers directly to q.

Preferred Qualifications

Location & Workplace Type

• Hybrid working model based out of our London Office. Occasional visits to client site expected.

Compensation

• Dependent on experience and location

Why Choose KX

Data Driven: We lead with instinct and follow fact.

Naturally Curious: We lean in, listen and learn fast.

All In: We take ownership, take on challenges and give it our all.

• Individually tailored training and skills development
• Private healthcare package and Employee Assistance Programme
• Enhanced maternity and paternity package