Principal Risk Systems Engineer

Soros Fund Management LLC; New York (NY); On-site; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Soros Fund Management LLC in New York seeks a hands-on Principal Risk Systems Engineer to own the design of the firm-wide risk platform, bridging engineering, data and investment risk with risk managers and quants.

The role emphasizes system design, architecture, and code delivery in Python and SQL, with AWS, containers and Kubernetes for scale, and interaction with senior stakeholders on tradeoffs.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software development experience, including leadership on large analytics platforms.
• Proven track record delivering production-grade risk or analytics systems.
• Strong communication with risk, trading and technology stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Set and own the overall risk platform design, data models and risk calculations.
• Design fast aggregation of risk and P&L data across levels (firm, fund, strategy).
• Write production code in Python and SQL; enforce code quality and testing standards.
• Run design reviews, set engineering standards, and mentor the team.
• Design data models and compute for intraday and end-of-day risk.
• Deploy workloads on AWS; use containers and Kubernetes to scale.
• Lead build-versus-buy decisions for analytics tech and evaluate trade-offs.
• Collaborate with risk managers and portfolio managers to translate needs into designs.

Skills

Python

SQL

Java/C++

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Docker

Job description

Risk Development – Principal Risk Systems Engineer

Company Overview

Soros Fund Management LLC (SFM) is a global asset manager and family office founded by George Soros in 1970. With $28 billion in assets under management (AUM), SFM serves as the principal asset manager for the Open Society Foundations, one of the world’s largest charitable foundations dedicated to advancing justice, human rights, and democracy.

Team Overview

The Risk Development team designs, builds, and maintains the technology and analytics that enable the firm to measure, monitor, and manage risk across all strategies. The team partners closely with risk managers, quants, operations and other teams to translate investment activity into timely, accurate, and actionable risk insights.

Job Overview

We are looking for a hands‑on Principal Risk Systems Engineer to join our Risk Development team and own the design of the firm‑wide risk platform. The role sits where engineering, data and investment risk meet. You will work closely with Risk Managers, Portfolio Managers, Quants, Strats, Operations and senior technology leaders.

The ideal candidate has designed and delivered fast, large‑scale risk analytics platforms, is still a strong hands‑on developer, and can explain complex technical and risk ideas clearly to senior people.

Deep knowledge of investment risk is required. We are hiring mainly for system design and architecture, technical depth, and the ability to work with senior stakeholders.

Major Responsibilities

• Set and own the overall design of the risk platform: data models, how risk is calculated and aggregated, and how it connects to upstream and vendor systems
• Design and build fast aggregation of risk and P&L data, including VaR and expected shortfall, with drill‑down from firm to fund, strategy and position
• Stay hands‑on: write production code in Python and SQL, and set the bar on code quality, testing and performance
• Run design reviews, set engineering standards, and mentor the team
• Design data models and compute that support both intraday and end‑of‑day risk
• Deploy and run workloads on AWS, using containers and Kubernetes to scale up and down
• Lead build‑versus‑buy decisions on analytics technology, weighing cost, performance and fit
• Work with Risk Managers and Portfolio Managers to turn what they need into designs, and explain the options and trade‑offs to senior stakeholders
• Improve reliability, speed and monitoring across the platform, and be the go‑to person for hard production problems

Architecture & Design

• 15+ years of software development, including significant time as lead architect on large data or analytics platforms in financial services
• A track record of designing systems that run reliably in production at scale, with real limits on data size, speed, memory and SLAs
• Deep experience with in‑memory analytics or OLAP tools on top of data warehouses or lakehouses
• Able to set a design direction, write it down, and bring the team along

Technical Depth

• Expert in performance tuning: memory, CPU profiling, query and load speed
• Strong Python, with clean, testable, maintainable code. Java or C++ a plus
• Strong SQL on large analytical databases
• Solid grasp of data structures, concurrency, parallelism and distributed computing

Risk & Financial Context

• Deep knowledge of market risk: historical and stressed VaR, expected shortfall, sensitivities, stress and scenario analysis, and P&L vectors
• Experience with factor risk models, risk attribution and portfolio construction
• Experience across asset classes (e.g., Equity, Fixed Income, FX, Derivatives) and their risk models
• Experience on Risk, Front Office or trading systems at hedge funds or large banks

Communication & Stakeholders

• Has worked directly with senior risk, trading and technology people
• Can explain complex technical ideas to non-technical people, in writing and in person
• Willing to push back on requirements, and offers a better option when saying no

Adaptability

• Comfortable in a fast‑paced team, balancing design and delivery work with production support

Preferred

• Experience building user interfaces and charts for risk or analytics tools
• Uses AI coding tools in practice to design, build and troubleshoot faster

We anticipate the base salary of this role to be between $200,000 and $250,000. In addition to a base salary, the successful candidate will also be eligible to receive a discretionary year‑end bonus.

In all respects, candidates need to reflect the following SFM core values:

Smart risk‑taking // Owner’s Mindset // Teamwork // Humility // Integrity