Infrastructure Engineer / Linux Performance Engineer

Barak Capital; Amsterdam; On-site; EUR 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Barak Capital is seeking an Infrastructure Engineer to own and optimize a bare‑metal Linux trading infrastructure focused on latency, reliability, and automation. You will tune BIOS and kernel settings, implement precise time synchronization, and deploy kernel‑bypass networking for market data paths.

You will profile latency across hardware, networking, and software layers, collaborate with quantitative teams, and build CI/CD pipelines for repeatable deployments on physical hardware.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in a Linux infrastructure, SRE, or performance engineering role, preferably in high‑frequency trading.
• Deep Linux systems knowledge: kernel tuning, schedulers, memory management, and storage I/O.
• Hands‑on experience with kernel‑bypass networking frameworks such as Onload/DPDK.
• Solid understanding of PTP (IEEE 1588) and time synchronization at scale.
• Strong scripting (Bash/Python) and automation skills, plus experience with configuration management (Ansible, Salt).
• Experience with CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI) in bare‑metal or on‑prem environments.

Responsibilities

• Own and optimize bare‑metal Linux infrastructure end‑to‑end—from BIOS/firmware through kernel tuning to application performance.
• Implement and maintain precision time synchronization (PTP/PPS) across the trading environment.
• Configure and tune kernel‑bypass networking (Onload/DPDK) for ultra‑low‑latency market data and order paths.
• Profile and eliminate latency at all layers: interrupts, CPU isolation, NUMA topology, memory, and network stacks.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure‑as‑code for repeatable, auditable deployments on physical hosts.
• Develop monitoring and observability tooling focused on latency distributions, jitter, and tail latency.
• Collaborate with quantitative developers to understand workloads and co‑design infrastructure.
• Manage network infrastructure including switch configuration and colocation connectivity.

Skills

Linux infra

SRE

Performance engineering

PTP time synchronization

Scripting

Automation

CI/CD tooling

team collaboration with trading

Tools

Solarflare Onload

ef_vi

DPDK

Ansible

Salt

Jenkins

GitLab CI

perf

ftrace

flamegraphs

eBPF/bpftrace

cyclictest

Job description

We're looking for an Infrastructure Engineer who thrives on squeezing every microsecond out of a system. You'll own the performance, reliability, and automation of our bare-metal trading infrastructure in an environment where latencyis measured in nanoseconds, and every kernel tuning decision matters. If you're the kind of engineer who reads kernelchangelogs for fun and has opinions about NIC ring buffer sizes, we'd love to talk!

Job Description:

• Own and optimize our bare-metal Linux infrastructure end-to-end — from BIOS/firmware settings through
• kernel tuning to application-level performance.
• Implement and maintain precision time synchronization (PTP/PPS) across the trading environment, ensuring
• Configure and tune kernel-bypass networking (Onload / OpenOnload, DPDK, or similar) for ultra-low-latency
• market data and order paths.
• Profile and eliminate latency at every layer: hardware interrupts, CPU isolation and pinning, NUMA topology,
• memory allocation, network stack.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code for repeatable, auditable deployments across
• physical hosts.
• Develop monitoring and observability tooling focused on latency distribution, jitter, and tail-latency anomalies
• — not just uptime.
• Collaborate with quantitative developers and trading teams to understand workload characteristics and codesign infrastructure around them.
• Manage network infrastructure including switch configuration, multicast, and colocation connectivity where
• applicable.

The Right Candidate

• 4+ years in a Linux infrastructure, SRE, or performance engineering role — experience in an HFT or electronic
• trading firm is strongly preferred.
• Deep Linux systems knowledge: kernel tuning (sysctl, cgroups, isolcpus, tickless kernels), scheduling policies,
• memory management, and storage I/O.
• Hands-on experience with kernel-bypass networking — Solarflare/Xilinx Onload, ef_vi, DPDK, or similar
• frameworks.
• Solid understanding of PTP (IEEE 1588), PPS, and time synchronization architecture at scale.
• Strong scripting and automation skills (Bash, Python) and experience with configuration management tools
• (Ansible, Salt, or similar).
• Experience with CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI, or similar) in a bare-metal or on-prem context.
• Comfort working with hardware: server selection, NIC selection and firmware, BIOS tuning, and colocation
• Familiarity with performance profiling tools: perf, ftrace, flamegraphs, eBPF/bpftrace, cyclictest.

Bonus

• Experience with FPGA-based networking or hardware timestamping.
• Knowledge of market data protocols (ITCH, OUCH, FIX) or exchange connectivity.
• Familiarity with InfiniBand or RoCE fabrics.
• Experience with compliance and security standards relevant to financial environments (ISO 27001, SOC 2).
• Exposure to container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) for non-latency-critical workloads and tooling