Software Engineering Team Lead

Upward Trend; Greater London; On-site; GBP 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Upward Trend in London seeks a confident, opinionated full‑stack developer who can balance hands‑on coding with strategic tech leadership as CTO. You will work with a small eight‑person team managing $2bn of assets and use advanced AI tools to broaden impact.

You will contribute across Python and TypeScript stacks, build dashboards and internal tools, and ensure robust data governance and security. A meritocratic, flat structure rewards ownership and shipping reliable code.

Qualifications

• Solid engineering background in pre-AI era with adaptation to AI tools.
• Experience with hedge funds or FinTech domain is beneficial.
• Experience leading people while coding hands-on.
• Ability to ship code in a flat, meritocratic team.

Responsibilities

• Develop and ship core features for a small, high-impact team.
• Build internal tools and dashboards to support asset management workflows.
• Collaborate with a London-based eight-person team to set technical direction.
• Ensure data governance and compliance when handling confidential data.

Skills

Python engineering

TypeScript/React

SQL / data modelling

Testing & code review

System design

AI tooling usage

Tools

FastAPI

Django

PostgreSQL

Time-series databases

Claude Code / Copilot

Job description

We have a unique role that offers CTO job title and equity in the business, but allows you to work as an IC 50%+ of your time, leveraging advanced AI tooling to have a broad impact on a small London-based team of 8 who manage $2bn of assets.

What we're looking for is a confident, opinionated full stack developer who built a solid engineering skillset in the pre-AI world, but has adapted in a sensible way to modern AI tools.

You will have some experience of managing people, but you will also have kept your skills fresh, and be keen to ship code yourself in a flat, meritocratic hierarchy.

Domain knowledge

• Ideally you will have some domain knowledge in hedge funds, asset managers, banks, trading platforms, or FinTechs, through professional experience.
• Experience with Market and Reference data (Bloomberg, Refinitiv, FactSet) all desirable.

Technical skills

• Python engineering: polars, pandas, NumPy, plus API and service work with FastAPI or Django.
• TypeScript with React: for internal tools, dashboards and portfolio or risk views.
• SQL and data modelling: Postgres or SQL Server, and time-series storage for prices and positions.
• Solid fundamentals: testing, code review, system design, debugging, and knowing when not to over-engineer for a team of eight.
• AI coding tools: heavy, disciplined use of tools like Claude Code, Cursor or Copilot, with good judgment about reviewing and testing what they produce.
• Building with LLM APIs: for example, internal assistants or search over research notes, broker reports and filings, plus automating document-heavy operations work.
• Data governance for AI: keeping inside information and confidential investor data out of third-party models, choosing enterprise agreements with no-training terms, and being able to explain all this to compliance.