Software Engineer - Build Platform

Optiver; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Performance-based bonus

27 vacation days + UK holidays

Breakfast & lunch

Private medical insurance

Pension scheme

ClassPass fitness membership

Training & conferences

International transfer opportunities

Job summary

Optiver seeks a strong engineer to improve the Build Platform and Developer Experience. You will design and operate scalable build systems for fast, reliable software delivery at scale.

Join a global team to drive faster feedback, implement reusable build libraries, and shape the future of our development lifecycle across the company.

Qualifications

• Expert in C++ build systems and developer tooling.
• Experience designing, adopting, or operating modern build systems.
• Strong understanding of incremental builds, caching, and dependency graphs.
• Skilled in diagnosing performance and reliability issues in CI/CD lifecycles.
• Experience with GitHub Actions, Buildkite, Jenkins or similar.
• Knowledge of source control workflows (GitHub, GitLab).
• Passion for developer productivity and improving SDLC.

Responsibilities

• Shape the future of C++ builds by designing and rolling out advanced build systems to accelerate times.
• Develop common build libraries, reusable CI/CD pipelines, and container images used across Optiver.
• Instrument platform observability to measure performance, reliability and adoption.
• Improve build performance at scale via incremental execution, caching, and scheduling.
• Design workflows enabling agents to compile, test, diagnose, and validate changes with minimal human intervention.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to remove friction and scale solutions.
• Help teams adopt new tools while balancing standardization with codebase needs.
• Stay current with build systems trends to guide tool adoption.

Skills

C++ builds

Build systems design

Performance profiling

Observability

Problem solving

Tools

Bazel

Buck2

Pants

Gradle

GitHub Actions

Buildkite

Jenkins

Job description

At Optiver, the velocity of our software development is a critical part of our competitive advantage. Our ability to compete depends on how quickly new ideas can move from insight to production. The Developer Experience team is a strategic engineering function with a clear mandate: improve the development lifecycle across the company in ways that accelerate delivery and reduce our time to market. We build the tools, systems, and platforms that shape how software is developed at Optiver.

The Build Platform sits at the heart of that lifecycle. Every change an engineer makes flows through it. When builds are fast, correct, and reproducible, engineers stay in flow, receive fast and trustworthy feedback, and shipping changes becomes routine. When builds are slow or unreliable, every team in the company pays the tax, one slow feedback loop at a time.

We’re looking for a strong engineer with a passion for improving developer productivity, a deep interest in build systems, and the experience to design and operate platforms at scale. You’ll join a growing global Developer Experience team and help shape the future of how software is built, tested, and delivered at Optiver, enabling both engineers and agents to move from idea to production-ready software with greater speed and confidence.

What you’ll do

• Shape the future of C++ builds at Optiver by designing and rolling out modern build systems that accelerate build times, improve reliability, and create a more consistent developer experience;
• Develop common build libraries, reusable CI/CD pipelines, and container images used across the company;
• Build observability into our platform so we can measure performance, reliability and adoption, and use that data to guide further improvements;
• Improve build performance at scale through incremental execution, caching, dependency analysis and efficient scheduling;
• Design workflows that enable agents to compile, test, diagnose failures, and validate changes reliably with minimal human intervention;
• Work closely with engineering teams to understand where existing workflows create friction and turn those problems into scalable solutions;
• Help teams adopt new tools and working practices, balancing standardisation with the needs of different codebases and engineering groups;
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging tools in the developer experience and build systems space, helping guide our adoption of best-in-class solutions.

See the team lead's opinion on why DevEx matters here .

Who you are

• You are a strong software engineer with deep experience in C++ build systems and developer tooling;
• You have hands-on experience designing, adopting, or operating modern build systems such as Bazel, Buck2, Pants, or Gradle, ideally including migration from established tooling;
• You have a deep understanding of build system concepts including incremental builds, caching, reproducibility, dependency graphs, remote execution, and artifact management;
• You are skilled at diagnosing performance and reliability issues across the local development and continuous integration lifecycle, using data and observability to guide improvements;
• You have significant experience with CI/CD platforms such as GitHub Actions, Buildkite, Jenkins, or similar, and understand how to design reliable, scalable pipelines and the infrastructure that supports them;
• You hold a deep understanding of the end-to-end lifecycle of software development from ideation to deployment;
• You have experience building tools and workflows around source control platforms such as GitHub and GitLab;
• You are passionate about developer productivity and have a track record of delivering meaningful improvements to the software development lifecycle.

Who we are

At Optiver, our mission is to continuously improve the market. By providing liquidity and accurate pricing in various financial instruments, to multiple exchanges across the world, we participate in the safeguarding of healthy and efficient markets.

What you’ll get

You’ll join a culture of collaboration and excellence, where you’ll be surrounded by curious thinkers and creative problem solvers. Motivated by a passion for continuous improvement, you’ll thrive in a supportive, high-performing environment alongside talented colleagues, working collectively to tackle the toughest problems in the financial markets.

In addition, you’ll receive:

• A performance-based bonus structure, enabling all of our employees to benefit from our global profit pool.
• 27 paid vacation days plus all UK public holidays.
• Daily breakfast and lunch, along with support on commuting expenses.
• Private medical insurance, pension scheme, and ClassPass fitness membership.
• Training and continuous learning opportunities, including access to conferences and tech events.
• International transfer opportunities for global career growth.