Trading Systems Operator

DRW; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A global trading firm in Greater London is seeking a Trading Systems Operator to join their low-latency trading desk focusing on North American equities. This technical role involves operating, debugging, and improving latency-sensitive production systems. A strong background in Linux and Python is essential. The successful candidate will work closely with traders and engineers to ensure operational excellence in trading platforms. Collaborative skills and a passion for enhancing workflows are highly valued.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software or systems development experience.
• Strong experience operating Linux‑based production systems.
• Able to troubleshoot bugs in software written in various languages.

Responsibilities

• Operate real‑time low‑latency trading systems across multiple markets.
• Troubleshoot production system incidents and create postmortem artifacts.
• Automate application upgrades to stay current with vendor releases.

Skills

Linux

Python

Shell scripting (bash)

Troubleshooting

Networking fundamentals

Version control (git)

Communication skills

Job description

DRW is a diversified trading firm with over 3 decades of experience bringing sophisticated technology and exceptional people together to operate in markets around the world. We value autonomy and the ability to quickly pivot to capture opportunities, so we operate using our own capital and trading at our own risk.

Headquartered in Chicago with offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, we trade a variety of asset classes including Fixed Income, ETFs, Equities, FX, Commodities and Energy across all major global markets. We have also leveraged our expertise and technology to expand into three non‑traditional strategies: real estate, venture capital and cryptoassets.

We operate with respect, curiosity and open minds. The people who thrive here share our belief that it’s not just what we do that matters–it's how we do it. DRW is a place of high expectations, integrity, innovation and a willingness to challenge consensus.

DRW is seeking a Trading Systems Operator to join our low‑latency trading desk focused on North American equities. This is a highly technical role centered on operating, debugging, and improving latency‑sensitive production systems. While the role sits close to live trading, deep trading experience is not required — strong Linux, systems, and Python skills are essential, and trading knowledge will be developed on the desk. You will work closely with traders, software engineers, and network engineers to ensure the reliability, performance, and operational excellence of the Blink trading platform.

What you’ll do:

• Operate real‑time low‑latency trading systems across numerous markets and datacenters
• Troubleshoot production system incidents and create artifacts for postmortems to ensure that similar failures in the future are avoided
• Own and automate application upgrades to stay current with vendor releases
• Wrangle large amounts of data to improve logging, monitoring and alerting so that critical issues are prioritized
• Write and maintain Python tooling for automation, monitoring, diagnostics, and operational workflows
• Use the command line as a power tool—bash, SSH, tmux, grep, awk—to investigate problems and ship fixes
• Coordinate with network engineers on exchange connectivity and packet level issues

What we’re looking for:

• 5+ years of software or systems development experience
• Strong experience operating Linux‑based production systems
• Experience coding in Python or shell scripting (e.g. bash) to automate rote system‑level tasks
• Able to troubleshoot bugs in software written in a range of languages and contribute solutions
• Familiarity with git or other version control software
• Persistent drive to improve workflows and make things better
• Ability to debug and reason about distributed, real‑time systems under pressure
• Solid understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/UDP, latency, packet loss)
• Asking questions, sharing information, and understanding the "why" for your work and our team's work
• Able to work well on a team as well as independently
• Strong communication skills and ability to work closely with engineering, networking, and trading teams

What will make you stand out:

• Experience in C++, Python, Ruby, Java
• Familiarity with conda
• Familiarity with continuous integration services like Bamboo
• Comfortable with software build process using TeamCity or similar, able to dig into any code‑base to diagnose and fix problems
• Prior on‑call production support experience for mission‑critical systems

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