Platform Engineer New Chicago

Maven Securities; Chicago, Northern (IL, KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Great engineering environment

Start-up vibe without the risk

Informal dress code and free food

Job summary

Maven, a market-leading trading firm, seeks a Platform/SRE/DevOps professional based in Chicago. You will align with Chicago desks, translate their requirements into deployable platform features, and ensure rapid, reliable production support across US hours.

You will work with Platform teams in London and Asia and the Chicago infrastructure and trading tech groups. The role emphasizes Kubernetes, GitOps, and automation with Python/Go to improve deployment efficiency.

Qualifications

• Around six years in a platform, SRE, DevOps or development role.
• Comfortable working with traders, researchers and developers: translate messy requests into realizable requirements.
• Able to recommend a direction and to say no when the ask is unreasonable.
• Persistent follow-up across time zones; keep momentum.
• Production Kubernetes: deployed, debugged changes, incident handling without waiting for others.
• Comfortable with GitOps (ArgoCD, Helm, Kustomize); Terraform or similar experience.

Responsibilities

• Understand Chicago team objectives and convert them into platform requirements.
• Design better working methods: hosted environments, path to production, templates and checks.
• Recommend existing solutions and push back when inappropriate.
• Coordinate across time zones so work progresses while London is offline.
• Be available during US hours for deployments or urgent issues.
• Contribute to the shared platform and avoid US-specific forks.
• Collaborate with Chicago Linux, network and storage teams on cross-cluster issues.

Skills

Stakeholder communication

Problem solving

Self-management

Tools

Kubernetes

ArgoCD

Helm

Kustomize

Terraform

Python

Go

Job description

Maven is a market-leading proprietary trading firm deploying its own capital across discretionary, systematic, and market-making strategies. Backed by deep expertise in trading, technology, and research, we are relentlessly focused on improving liquidity across global listed derivatives. Through advanced execution and pricing technologies, we improve how financial markets operate.

Maven has a culture that is relaxed and informal but highly rewarding of strong performance. We have offices in London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, New York and Chicago. Technology is central to how the firm trades, and the people who join get real ownership of what they work on.

The team

Platform Engineering builds and operates the environment Maven's applications run on: 22 Kubernetes clusters across Europe, the US and Asia, all on-premises, supporting over 1,100 production deployments for 44 teams and desks.

Teams own their own applications and deploy them themselves. Our job is to build the systems and ways of working that let them do that without coming through us: hosted developer environments, a safe path to production, and the clusters those workloads land on. Linux and networking sit with dedicated teams; we sit between that layer and the people building on top of it. We still get pulled into production problems that cut across stacks, but the aim is always the same: turn a recurring need into something a team can do themselves.

The role

This role is based in our Chicago office. You work US hours with the desks here: understand what they are trying to do, turn that into something they can run themselves, and deal with the production problems that cannot wait for London.

You will work with Platform colleagues in London and Asia, and with the Chicago infrastructure and trading technology teams.

What you will be doing

• Sitting with Chicago teams to understand what they are trying to accomplish, including the parts they have not spelled out, and turning that into a requirement the platform team can act on
• Designing better ways of working for those teams: hosted developer environments (Coder), the path from a change to production, templates and checks that make the safe way the easy one
• Recommending how we apply what we already have, and pushing back when a request is the wrong solution
• Following through across the timezone gap so things do not stall when London has gone home
• Being available in US hours when a deployment or application misbehaves, and handling the ones that cannot wait
• Contributing to the shared platform rather than a US-specific fork. One repository, one set of standards
• Working with the Chicago Linux, network and storage teams on anything that spans the hosts and the cluster

What we are looking for

Around six years in a platform, SRE, DevOps or development role. Depth matters more than the exact number.

• Comfortable working with traders, researchers and developers: you can listen to a messy request, find the actual problem, and explain a proposed approach in their terms
• Able to recommend a direction and to say no when the ask is unreasonable or would make things worse
• Persistent follow-up. A lot of this job is unfinished conversations across a six-hour gap.
• Production Kubernetes: you have deployed to it, debugged a broken change, and can deal with an incident without waiting for someone else. You do not need to have run a fleet.
• Comfortable with GitOps. We use ArgoCD, Helm and Kustomize; Terraform or similar experience transfers.
• Able to write code to automate work. We use Python most of the time; Go is also useful.
• Experience building a development or deployment process that other teams then ran themselves.

Nice to have

None of these are required.

• Experience in a trading firm, or another environment where the users of the platform are close to the business. Useful, not required; we have hired well from outside finance.
• Judgment about when to decide locally and when to wait for the rest of the team
• Coder, Gitpod, Codespaces, or another hosted developer environment
• Kubernetes on-premises or on bare metal
• Observability stacks you have operated: Prometheus, Thanos, Grafana, OpenTelemetry or similar
• Experience in a new or growing regional team
• Experience using AI-powered tools to improve efficiency and workflows.

What we can offer you

• A great engineering environment whereby technology is key to our success.
• The upside of start-up without the associated risks.
• A great, friendly, informal, and highly rewarding culture.
• Informal dress code, loads of free food and social events.
• Fast-growing global firm with plenty of opportunity where you will have significant impact.

At Maven, our goal is to create an environment that empowers and motivates our employees to maximise their potential. Our comprehensive benefits package is designed to optimise performance, reward our employees, and allow them time to pursue their passions.

Salary Range: $150000 - $200000, plus a discretionary bonus.

Demographic Questions US

Maven is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture for our employees. It is crucial for us to understand the demographics of our candidate pool to measure our recruitment practices. There is no requirement for any candidate to answer our demographic questions. Refusal to answer any or all questions will not subject the candidate to any adverse treatment. For candidates who complete the questionnaire, their data will be anonymised and used only in the aggregate to inform our strategy. The answers to the questionnaire will be kept confidential, separate from the application, and will not be placed in the candidate’s personnel file, if hired. The answers will not be provided to the supervisors in the employing office if the candidate is hired . Maven is an equal opportunity employer.

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For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in Maven’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

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