Senior Network Engineer - Trading Infrastructure

ZANSKAR RESEARCH; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 5,000,000; Full time

Job summary

ZANSKAR RESEARCH in Bengaluru seeks a Senior Network Engineer to own design, build, and operation of our trading network and server estate. You will focus on end-to-end latency across colocation sites, exchange connectivity, and internal fabric—measured in nanoseconds, not milliseconds.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role at the intersection of networking, systems engineering, and trading infrastructure.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in network/systems engineering, incl. ultra-low-latency environment
• Deep hands-on expertise with low-latency switching, multicast, BGP/OSPF, exchange connectivity
• Strong Linux internals knowledge - kernel tuning, performance profiling
• Experience with server hardware/firmware optimization for latency
• Configuration management and deployment at scale: Ansible, Puppet, PXE/kickstart, golden image
• Monitoring/observability with Prometheus, Grafana; capable of building dashboards from scratch

Responsibilities

• Architect, deploy, and tune ultra-low-latency switching fabric
• Manage exchange and market-data connectivity
• Build and tune trading servers end to end
• Own Linux kernel tuning and NIC driver tuning
• Automate server provisioning across colo sites
• Own monitoring and observability stack and alerting
• Deploy precision timing infrastructure (PTP/White Rabbit)
• Build latency measurement pipelines and dashboards
• Lead capacity planning and vendor management
• Mentor a team of network and systems engineers

Skills

Low-latency networking

Linux kernel tuning

BGP/OSPF routing

Automation with Ansible

Monitoring with Prometheus

Latency troubleshooting

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/EE

Tools

Ansible

Puppet

PXE/kickstart provisioning

Git

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

We're looking for a Senior Network Engineer to own the design, build, and operation of our trading network and server estate. You'll be accountable for end-to-end latency across colocation sites, exchange connectivity, and internal fabric - measured in nanoseconds, not milliseconds. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role at the intersection of networking, systems engineering, and trading infrastructure.

What You'll Do

• Architect, deploy, and tune low-latency switching fabric (Arista 7130/7150, Exablaze, Cisco Nexus) and exchange cross-connects
• Manage exchange and market-data connectivity: multicast feeds, A/B feed arbitration, order entry sessions, and colo cage buildouts
• Build and tune trading servers end to end - BIOS/UEFI settings, C-states, P-states, turbo, hyperthreading, NUMA topology, and PCIe lane placement
• Own Linux kernel tuning: IRQ affinity, CPU isolation and shielding, hugepages, scheduler and NIC driver tuning, and kernel bypass (Solarflare Onload, Exanic, DPDK)
• Automate server provisioning, configuration, and deployment across colo sites - no snowflake boxes, everything reproducible from code
• Own the monitoring and observability stack for network, servers, and latency telemetry, including alerting and on-call escalation
• Deploy and maintain precision timing infrastructure: PTP/White Rabbit, GPS grandmasters, hardware timestamping
• Build latency measurement pipelines - tap aggregation, packet capture, and correlation of wire-to-wire and tick-to-trade metrics
• Lead capacity planning, vendor and carrier management, and new venue onboarding
• Mentor and grow a small team of network and systems engineers; set standards and run change control for production trading systems

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years in network/systems engineering, including 3+ years in HFT, prop trading, market making, or a comparable ultra-low-latency environment
• Deep hands-on expertise with low-latency switching, multicast, BGP/OSPF, and exchange connectivity
• Strong Linux internals knowledge - kernel tuning, performance profiling, and troubleshooting under production load
• Demonstrated experience with server-level hardware and firmware optimization for latency
• Configuration management and deployment at scale: Ansible and Puppet (or Salt/Chef), PXE/kickstart provisioning, golden image and firmware lifecycle management, Git-based change workflows, and CI-driven rollout
• Monitoring and observability experience with Prometheus and Grafana, plus practical exposure to several of: Zabbix, Nagios/Icinga, Telegraf/InfluxDB, Netdata, collected, ELK/Loki, SNMP-based network monitoring, LibreNMS, and Corvil/Beeks or equivalent latency monitoring platforms - must be able to build dashboards and alerting from scratch, not just consume them
• Comfort with packet capture and analysis tools (tcpdump, Wireshark, hardware-timestamped capture)
• A track record operating production systems where downtime has direct financial impact

Nice to Have

• Python (or C/C++, Go) for automation, telemetry pipelines, and latency analysis tooling
• FPGA/SmartNIC exposure (Xilinx, Napatech, Arista MetaWatch)
• Terraform, containerization, and infrastructure-as-code beyond config management
• Familiarity with venue-specific protocols (FIX, ITCH/OUCH, exchange-native binary APIs)