Senior C++ Engineer - Low-Latency

Ocean Red; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work

2 days in office

Job summary

Ocean Red in London is seeking mid-level or senior C++ engineers to build high-throughput, latency-sensitive trading systems.

You’ll join a specialist C++ team focusing on core trading and exchange tech, developing services on Linux, networking, and real-time event processing.

The role emphasizes understanding architecture, profiling performance, and delivering reliable production systems.

Qualifications

• C++11 or later with real-time programming experience.
• Experience with multithreading in high-concurrency systems.
• Knowledge of performance profiling and optimization.
• Familiarity with Boost, Python, SQL and Git is beneficial.

Responsibilities

• Develop C++ services on Linux for high-throughput trading.
• Work on network communication, messaging and market data integration.
• Profile, optimize bottlenecks and improve system resilience.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to improve architecture.

Skills

C++11+

Multithreading

Real-time systems

Tools

Boost

Python

SQL

Git

Job description

OVERVIEW

Business | European trading technology firm

Hybrid | 2 days a week in the office

Level | Mid-level and senior engineers considered

Build the systems other trading firms depend on

Some C++ teams build applications.

This team builds the infrastructure underneath them.

You’ll work on high-throughput, latency-sensitive systems used to process electronic trading activity

The engineering sits close to the network, the data and the critical path.

That means thinking about things like:

• how data moves through the system
• what happens when message volumes increase
• where contention appears
• how memory is being used
• why one implementation is faster than another
• how to keep a critical system predictable and reliable

This is the kind of environment where understanding what the machine is actually doing matters.

WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON

You’ll join a specialist C++ team responsible for core trading and exchange technology.

Your work will include developing, testing and improving systems that need to process large volumes of events in real time.

You could be working on:

• C++ services on Linux
• network communication using TCP, UDP and multicast
• high-throughput messaging and event processing
• multithreaded and concurrent systems
• profiling and removing performance bottlenecks
• improving resilience in long-running production systems
• integrating financial-market protocols and connectivity

The platform is mature and specialised.

You won’t be expected to arrive on Monday and start changing its most critical components on Tuesday.

You’ll first learn how the architecture works, understand why certain decisions were made, and gradually take ownership of more complex areas of the system.

WHAT THEY'RE LOOKING FOR

The strongest candidates tend to have one thing in common:

C++ is their main engineering language, not something they occasionally use.

You’ll need solid experience with:

• C++11 or later
• multithreading / concurrency
• performance-sensitive or real-time systems

Experience with Boost, Python, SQL and Git will also be useful.

If you’ve worked with FIX, SBE, market data, exchange connectivity or electronic trading systems, even better.

But financial markets experience isn’t essential.

Engineers coming from areas such as networking, telecoms, embedded systems, real-time infrastructure, high-performance computing or other mission-critical environments can also fit well.

WHO THIS TENDS TO SUIT

You’ll probably enjoy this team if you like understanding systems properly rather than treating them as black boxes.

You like finding out why something is slow rather than simply rewriting it.

And you’re happy working with engineers who will challenge your technical decisions and expect you to challenge theirs.

If you’re a C++ engineer working on performance-critical, real-time or network-heavy systems, apply and I’ll talk you through the engineering team, technology and interview process.

***You must be eligible to work in the UK, no sponsorship is available for this particular opportunity***