Senior KDB+ Developer

Luxoft; Greater London; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Luxoft is seeking an experienced Senior KDB+ Developer to design, develop and optimize high performance data platforms built on kdb+. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in kdb+ tick architecture, performance tuning at scale and close collaboration with business stakeholders – particularly within Risk functions – to deliver robust, efficient and maintainable solutions.

The role involves designing tick systems, handling large datasets with low latency, optimizing q queries and mentoring

Qualifications

• 8+ years of hands on experience in kdb+ development in a production environment.
• Strong expertise in q language including table design (splayed, partitioned, segmented), in memory vs on disk trade-offs, efficient joins, aggregation and windowed analytics
• Deep understanding of kdb+ tick architecture including ticker plant, RDB, HDB and associated patterns
• Proven experience working with large datasets and optimising queries for performance and scalability
• Strong background in Unix/Linux environments, including shell scripting for automation, monitoring and operational tooling
• Solid understanding of software delivery processes and methodologies (Agile, CI/CD, Version control, release)
• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, demonstrating systematic reasoning and problem solving skills

Responsibilities

• Design, develop and maintain kdb+ tick systems with strong understanding of data organization, schema design and the performance implications of different architectural approaches.
• Build and operate solutions handling large scale, high frequency datasets, ensuring low latency, high throughput and efficient memory usage.
• Analyze and optimize q queries, data models and ingestion pipelines for both real time and historical workloads.
• Collaborate closely with Risk function teams to translate business requirements into efficient, scalable and performant code.
• Drive continuous improvement through refactoring, performance benchmarking and adoption of best practices.
• Mentor and guide junior and mid-level developers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, code quality and knowledge sharing.
• Participate in design reviews, production support and root cause analysis of complex system issues.
• Work collaboratively within an Agile or iterative delivery environment, contributing to design, implementation, testing and release phases.

Skills

KDB+ development

Q language

Performance tuning

High-frequency data

Unix/Linux

Agile/CI-CD

Stakeholder comms

Mentoring

Job description

Project description

We are seeking an experienced Senior KDB+ Developer to design, develop and optimize high performance data platforms built on kdb+. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in kdb+ tick architecture, performance tuning at scale and close collaboration with business stakeholder - particularly within Risk functions - to deliver robust, efficient and maintainable solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop and maintain kdb+ tick systems with strong understanding of data organization, schema design and the performance implications of different architectural approaches.
• Build and operate solutions handling large scale, high frequency datasets, ensuring low latency, high throughput and efficient memory usage.
• Analyze and optimize q queries, data models and ingestion pipelines for both real time and historical workloads.
• Collaborate closely with Risk function teams to translate business requirements into efficient, scalable and performant code.
• Drive continuous improvement through refactoring, performance benchmarking and adoption of best practices.
• Mentor and guide junior and mid-level developers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, code quality and knowledge sharing.
• Participate in design reviews, production support and root cause analysis of complex system issues.
• Work collaboratively within an Agile or iterative delivery environment, contributing to design, implementation, testing and release phases.

SKILLS

Must have

• 8+ years of hands on experience in kdb+ development in a production environment.
• Strong expertise in q language including: table design (splayed, partitioned, segmented), In memory vs on disk trade offs, efficient joins, aggregation and windowed analytics
• Deep understanding of kdb+ tick architecture including ticker plant, RDB, HDB nd associated patterns
• Proven experience working with large datasets and optimising queries for performance and scalability
• Strong background in Unix/Linux environments, including shell scripting for automation, monitoring and operational tooling
• Solid understanding of software delivery processes and methodologies (Agile, CI/CD, Version control, release)
• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, demonstrating systematic reasoning and problem solving skills

Nice to have

• Knowledge of inter process communication mechanism in kdb+ and integration with external systems
• Experience tuning kdb+ systems for low-latency and high availability
• Familiarity with data quality checks, validation frameworks and operational resilience patterns
• Exposure to financial markets data (market data, trading, risk, post-trade workflows, equity asset class)
• passion for writing clean, efficient and well-structured code