Senior Software Engineer

Group One Trading; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) and Roth 401(k)

Health, dental, vision

Paid holidays

Parental leave

Flexible spending accounts

Generous vacation

Job summary

Group One Trading is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to build and improve real-time systems powering an options market-making business. You will work directly with traders and technologists to translate complex requirements into reliable production software.

The role emphasizes architecture, performance, and production reliability, with opportunities to lead technical discussions, mentor others, and raise engineering standards across the team.

Qualifications

• Substantial professional software development experience across full SDLC.
• Strong instincts for maintainability, testability, observability, and reliability.
• Experience developing real-time, high-throughput software for financial markets or similar environments.
• Ability to lead design discussions, mentor teammates, and raise engineering standards.

Responsibilities

• Build and improve real-time systems powering our options market-making business.
• Translate complex business requirements into reliable production software and take ownership from design to live operation.
• Lead technical design discussions and mentor developers across the team.
• Collaborate with traders and technologists to ensure robust production performance.

Skills

Real-time systems

C# / C++

Architectural design

Distributed architectures

Mentoring

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field

Job description

(Base salary is only one part of Group One Trading's total compensation, which includes an annual discretionary bonus.)

THE OPPORTUNITY

Our Senior Software Engineers build and improve the real-time systems that power our options market-making business. They work directly with traders and other technologists to translate complex business and trading requirements into reliable production software, and take ownership of critical systems from initial design through deployment and live operation. This is a hands‑on engineering role for someone who can reason deeply about software architecture, performance, and production behavior.

THE SKILLSET

Our production environment is primarily heavily‑optimized C#, with C++ integrated into especially performance‑sensitive components. We value demonstrated engineering ability over experience with a particular language, and we embrace agentic AI workflows as a valuable asset to our engineering approach.

Our ideal Senior Software Engineer possesses the following:

• Substantial professional software development experience throughout the full software development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring, and production support
• Strong software engineering instincts, treating abstraction, maintainability, testability, observability, and operational reliability as first‑class design concerns
• Experience developing real‑time, high‑throughput software for electronic trading, financial markets, or another performance‑sensitive production environment
• Ability to lead technical design discussions, make pragmatic architectural decisions, mentor other developers, and improve engineering standards across the team
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders
• A bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience

Are you equally comfortable designing new systems in a distributed architecture, reasoning about performance tradeoffs, and diagnosing difficult production issues? Do you take ownership of systems after they are deployed? Can you raise the technical standard of a team while continuing to write and deliver high‑quality software? If yes, you may be a strong fit for this Senior Software Engineer position.

WHAT TO EXPECT AS A SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Within 1 month, you will complete your initial orientation and begin developing a working understanding of our options market‑making business, trading systems, and production technology environment. You will become familiar with our codebases, system architecture, historical and real‑time data, deployment processes, monitoring tools, and risk controls. You will build working relationships with traders, developers, quantitative researchers, and infrastructure engineers, begin participating in technical design and code reviews, and make initial contributions to the production system.

Within 3 months, you will take end‑to‑end ownership of a meaningful trading‑system enhancement. You will work directly with stakeholders to define the problem, understand the operational and performance requirements, design and implement the solution, and validate your work in non‑production environments. You will coordinate deployment with appropriate monitoring and controls, participate effectively in production support, and begin identifying opportunities to improve system performance, reliability, and maintainability. You will study for and pass the FINRA Series 57 exam, enabling you to independently lead projects that directly impact trading decisions.

Within 6 months, you will be a trusted technical owner for one or more important components of the trading platform. You will independently lead complex projects from initial concept through production operation, make informed architectural and performance tradeoffs, and deliver measurable improvements in trading capability, system performance, reliability, or developer productivity. You will proactively address technical debt and operational risk, improve testing and observability, mentor other developers, and help establish engineering practices that allow the team to move quickly without compromising correctness. Your growing understanding of our markets and trading systems will enable you to identify and drive new opportunities to improve the platform.

THE BENEFITS

Our Senior Software Engineers earn a competitive salary, including a performance‑based bonus. We provide fantastic benefits, including 401(k) and Roth 401(k) retirement plans with employer matching, medical, dental, vision, generous vacation time, paid holidays, parental leave, and flexible spending accounts (FSA) for health care, dependent daycare, and parking or mass transit expenses.