Quantitative Developer - iSAM Securities

iSAM; Greater London; On-site; GBP 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

iSAM seeks a senior engineer to design and operate low-latency distributed systems at the heart of its trading platform. You will work on market data, routing, pricing, execution, risk, and the messaging fabric that ties them together.

This is a hands-on role for someone who has architected such systems in a trading environment, not just maintained them. You will join a collaborative team where you provide a strong technical voice, drive design choices, and push engineering processes to a higher

Qualifications

• Fluent in modern C++ and building latency-critical distributed components.
• Proven track record designing systems in hedge funds, prop trading, or investment banking environments.
• Deep understanding of latency drivers across network, hardware, OS, and language layers.
• Experience delivering large efforts with multiple teams and shipping production systems.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to design of latency-critical components: market data, order routing, execution, risk, and messaging.
• Drive end-to-end improvements, identifying weaknesses and proposing direction.
• Evaluate trade-offs across the latency stack and implement measured optimisations.
• Deliver at scale across engineers and teams, aligning stakeholders and coordinating delivery.

Skills

C++ expertise

Low-latency design

Distributed systems

Trading environment

Performance tuning

Team leadership

Job description

iSAM is an innovative, financial technology firm specialising in quantitative trading, comprised of iSAM Funds and iSAM Securities.

iSAM Securities regulated by the FCA, SFC, and CIMA registered, is a leading algorithmic trading firm and trusted electronic market maker, providing liquidity, technology and prime services to institutional clients and trading venues globally. The firm offers full-service prime brokerage and execution via its cutting-edge proprietary technology, as well as market leading analytics, cleared through the group’s bank Prime Brokers.

iSAM Funds is an alternative asset manager specialising in systematic investing. Each strategy is unique, provides a specialist quantitative approach and is designed to deliver highly diversifying absolute returns for institutional portfolios.

About the Role:

Our team builds and operates the low-latency distributed systems at the core of our
trading platform - market data, order routing, pricing, execution, risk, and the
messaging fabric that ties them together. This is a hands-on senior engineering role
for someone who has architected such systems in a trading environment, not just
maintained them. You will join a collaborative team where you have a strong technical
voice, contributing to design and driving both the systems and the engineering
processes around them to a better state.

Responsibilities:

• Contribute to and help shape the design of latency-critical distributed
  components: market data, order routing, execution, risk, and the messaging
  fabric between them.
• Drive systems and engineering processes to a better state: identify weaknesses,
  propose direction, and deliver improvements end to end.
• Reason about the full latency stack across network, hardware, OS, and language
  layers, and make deliberate, measured trade-offs.
• Deliver at scale across multiple engineers and teams: set technical direction,
  align stakeholders, and coordinate delivery.

Qualifications:

• Fluent in modern C++.
• Proven track record designing critical low-latency distributed systems in a
  hedge fund, prop trading, or investment banking environment.
• Concrete, demonstrable understanding of what drives a latency profile across
  the network, hardware/architecture, OS, and language layers.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver large efforts spanning multiple people and
  teams.
• Enough hard-won production experience (“scars”) to know which approaches to
  avoid and why.
• Experience delivering performance-critical systems measured and tuned against
  demanding latency targets.
• Exposure to exchange connectivity and market data)

Personal Attributes:

• Positive, pragmatic, and collaborative under pressure.
• A driver, not a passenger: you move systems and teams forward rather than
  maintaining the status quo or talking without shipping.
• Deeply aware of trade-offs - performance vs. complexity vs. maintainability vs.
  delivery time.