DevOps Engineer (Contract)

Engineers and Constructors International Inc.; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Engineers and Constructors International Inc. is looking for a DevOps Engineer based in Houston for a six-month contract. The role demands extensive experience with front-office trading support and FIX protocol, including strong technical and analytical skills.

You will be part of a high-performing team ensuring optimal trading environments through proactive management and troubleshooting. Ideal candidates have at least 8 years of relevant experience and a comprehensive understanding of trading systems and market data distribution.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in FIX protocol and trading support.
• Solid experience in application deployment best practices.
• Knowledge of market data providers and liquidity aggregation platforms.

Responsibilities

• Manage critical end-to-end workflows for trading environments.
• Assist with troubleshooting and issue resolution.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for trading systems.

Skills

Front Office application support

Incident response

Scripting (Python, PowerShell, C#)

FIX protocol

Trading lifecycle knowledge

Analytical skills

Tools

Real Time Distribution Systems

kdb

Trading systems (TT, NYFIX)

Job description

Join the ECI Group's Professional Technical Services Network as a DevOps Engineer. This is a Houston based a six-month contract role. Note: No visa sponsorships are available at this time for this position.

Role Overview

Must have strong front-office trading support experience, including 8+ years of FIX protocol, exchange connectivity, and real-time market data distribution (RTDS/DACS/ADH/ADS).

Responsibilities

As DevOps Engineer, you will be a hands‑on Engineer and a member of a small high‑performing team responsible for global derivatives trading production environments. Your work will be driven both by product teams and engineering team backlogs of improvements and tech debt. Work includes:

• Ensure proactive management of critical end‑to‑end workflows, continuously improving stability and resilience through close collaboration with delivery and infrastructure teams.
• Assist with troubleshooting and issue resolution across development, support, and technical business users.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for trading systems initiatives.
• Hands‑on experience in supporting scalable algorithmic trading technology in a compliant and flexible way.
• Experience of Algo regulation, audit and compliance & RTS6) is highly desirable.
• Being part of the on‑call rota working as part of a global team development engineers.

Required Industry Knowledge

• Understanding of all major global futures exchanges.
• Knowledge of full exchange‑traded derivatives trade lifecycle.
• Minimum of 8 years’ experience in Commodity Trading & Capital Markets / Investment Banks – to bring credible externalisation of mindset and approach and ensure we are cost: value competitive.
• Knowledge of market data providers (Bloomberg, Refinitiv, etc.) and liquidity aggregation platforms.
• Minimum of 8 years of knowledge of Realtime Market Data distribution platforms, individual Feed handlers and enterprise level realtime consolidated feeds.
• Minimum of 8 years of knowledge of timeseries analytic frameworks including kdb, shakti or similar technologies.

Key Skills and Experience Required

• Solid track record in application deployment best practices.
• 10+ years of experience with Front Office application support and vendor management.
• Rapid incident response to maintain continuous trading operations, turning quick fixes into robust, scalable solutions.
• Proactive system monitoring and troubleshooting, owning reliability improvements and ensuring their successful delivery.
• Understanding of trading lifecycle, including order capture & execution, allocation workflow, settlement, and compliance requirements.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to analyze complex data sets and propose innovative solutions.
• Must have strong technical skills in scripting, Python, PowerShell, C#, SQL or other programming languages.
• 8+ years solid relevant FIX Engineering experience.
• Proven experience with exchange and vendor certification.
• Knowledge of Third Party Networks and EMS/OMS software vendors (e.g., TT, NYFIX, Bloomberg, TradingScreen).
• Experience in messaging systems, and experience debugging network protocols such as TCP, multicast, would be highly regarded.
• 8+ years operational experience in supporting market data distribution platforms such as Real Time Distribution Systems (RTDS) knowledge for DACS, ADH & ADS components.
• Knowledge of multicast data traffic management, arbitration and message queueing.
• 5+ years operational experience in supporting time series frameworks such as kdb, shakti.

Soft Skills

• Excellent communication skills to interact with traders, developers, and stakeholders.
• Thrives in high‑pressure situations while working alongside traders, developers and other engineering teams.
• Proactive, self‑motivated, and flexible with a positive attitude.
• Ability to work under demanding deadlines with changing priorities in a trading room environment.