Data Platform Operations Engineer – Performance

IMC Trading; Illinois; On-site; USD 185,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

IMC Trading in Illinois seeks a data-focused engineer to support the Performance Team’s data platform, ensuring reliability and performance for performance analysis and decision-making.

You will own ETLs, data quality checks, and alerting, troubleshooting data issues, and optimizing workloads in a production environment. Strong Python, PySpark, and Pandas skills are essential.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in software or data engineering with an operational/production focus.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field preferred.
• Proficiency in Python with PySpark and Pandas.
• Experience supporting production ETL or data processing systems.
• Familiarity with Git-based development workflows and CI/CD (GitLab preferred).

Responsibilities

• Own the operational health of the Performance Team’s data platform.
• Monitor and maintain ETLs and data pipelines for correctness, timeliness, and stability.
• Design and maintain data quality checks, reports, and alerting for performance data.
• Investigate and resolve data issues and pipeline failures, driving root cause.
• Own and troubleshoot GitLab CI/CD pipeline issues related to performance data workflows.
• Monitor workloads and resource usage; identify imbalances and bottlenecks.
• Build and maintain operational tooling, automation, and runbooks.
• Continuously tune data pipelines and workloads to improve performance and efficiency.

Skills

Python

PySpark

Pandas

Data engineering

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

GitLab

Git-based CI/CD

Job description

We are looking for a data-focused engineer with a strong operational focus to support the Performance Team’s data platform at IMC. This role is responsible for the reliability, correctness, and performance of data systems that directly support performance analysis and decision-making.

The role is production-facing and works closely with the Performance team and aligned stakeholders to ensure data workflows are robust, observable, and efficient.

What you’ll do:

• Own the operational health of the Performance Team’s data platform
• Monitor and maintain ETLs and data pipelines for correctness, timeliness, and stability
• Design and maintain data quality checks, reports, and alerting specific to performance data
• Investigate and resolve data issues and pipeline failures, driving problems to root cause
• Own and troubleshoot GitLab CI/CD pipeline issues related to performance data workflows
• Monitor workloads and resource usage; identify and resolve imbalances and bottlenecks
• Build and maintain operational tooling, automation, and runbooks
• Continuously tune data pipelines and workloads to improve performance and resource efficiency

What you bring:

• 3+ years of experience in software engineering or data engineering with an operational or production focus
• A Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related field is strongly preferred
• Proficiency in Python, with hands-on experience using PySpark and Pandas
• Experience supporting production ETL or data processing systems
• Familiarity with Git-based development workflows and CI/CD systems (GitLab preferred)
• Strong analytical skills and attention to detail
• Comfortable taking ownership in a performance- and reliability-critical environment

Nice to Have

• Experience working with performance-critical or high-throughput systems
• Exposure to workload scheduling, resource management, or cluster-based compute

What Success Looks Like

• Performance data pipelines are reliable, observable, and trusted
• Issues are detected early and resolved quickly with clear root-cause ownership
• Workloads are well-balanced and systems run efficiently

The Base Salary range for the role is included below. Base salary is only one component of total compensation; all full-time, permanent positions are eligible for a discretionary bonus and benefits, including paid leave and insurance. Please visit Benefits - US | IMC Trading for more comprehensive information.

Salary Range

$185,000—$225,000 USD

About Us

IMC is a research-driven trading firm where quantitative modeling, machine learning, and engineering shape how modern markets are traded. A stabilizing force in markets since 1989, we provide liquidity across trading venues, delivering the best outcome in value and risk management to investors. Using our own technology and capital, we build proprietary systems and algorithms that operate across global markets. Our researchers, traders, and engineers work as a collective, combining rapid experimentation, advanced infrastructure, and real-time feedback to turn insight into execution and execution into advantage.