The Role
Seeking a highly motivated and experienced engineer to join the Risk Data Tech team. You’ll have the chance to boost your career in a fast-paced and ambitious team that strives to create state-of-the-art tools for a range of data-related activities, including onboarding, analysis, sourcing, quality checking, and lifecycle management. This fund doesn’t just have a standard data warehouse – their data estate is varied and highly optimised to deliver the needs of the business. Your challenges will be varied, involving:
- Developing and maintaining core tools for analysts, quants, and engineers to on-board and analyse datasets at multi-terabyte-scale.
- Collaborating with Risk Officers and with other Engineering teams to design and develop solutions for Risk for the whole company or for specific needs for an engine or a strategy.
- Collaborating with Data Engineering team as they design and develop unique, bespoke solutions to solve big data challenges – they work on 200 Terabyte of data and own the main services that onboard vendor Risk data to support investments.
- Designing and implementing strategies and tools to monitor and validate the data quality and data processing.
The Technology
Core systems are almost all running on Windows and most of the code is in .NET (C#). The first data storage is in SQL Server and they’re starting to use ArcticDb for the largest datasets. Part of the work is also in Linux with Python code, using pandas and other libraries to support visualization and data processing.
The platform inherits from old tools and services, so they use many old technologies (Remoting, MSMQ, WCF, Winforms, WPF) while migrating to new tools (.NET Core 8, Kafka, REST APIs, React, Arrow Flight). Devops is based on Bitbucket and Teamcity (Jenkins for the Python stack), using Grafana + Prometheus for metrics collection. Parts of the services are being moved into Docker for containerisation and Kubernetes for container orchestration. The technology list is never static: they constantly evaluate new tools and libraries.
Working Here
This fund has a small company, no-attitude feel. It is flat structured, open, transparent and collaborative, and you will have plenty of opportunity to have enormous impact on the firm. They are actively engaged with the broader technology community.
- They host and sponsor London’s PyData & Machine Learning Meetups and open-source some of their technology
- They regularly talk at leading industry conferences, and tweet about relevant technology and how they’re using it.
They have a fantastic open-plan office overlooking the River Thames, and continually strive to make the environment a great place in which to work.
- Regular social events; from photography to climbing, karting, wine tasting and monthly team lunches
- Annual away days and off-sites for the whole team
- Canteen with a daily allowance for breakfast and lunch, and an on-site bar for in the evening
- As well as PCs and Macs, you’ll find loads of cool tech including light cubes and 3D printers, guitars, ping-pong and table-football, and a piano.
Technology and Business Skills
Essential:
- Extensive programming experience, ideally in .NET
- Knowledge of the challenges of dealing with large data sets, both structured and unstructured
- Knowledge of modern practices for ETL, data engineering and stream processing
- Proficient on Windows platforms with knowledge of various scripting languages, with exposure to Linux environments
- Working knowledge of one or more relevant database technologies, e.g. SQL Server
Advantageous:
- Prior experience of working with financial market data or alternative data
- Relevant mathematical knowledge, e.g. statistics, time-series analysis
- Experience with Python, Kubernetes, S3 or Kafka.
- Experience in data visualisation and building web apps in modern frameworks, e.g. React
- Experience with git and continuous integration environments.
Personal Attributes:
- Strong academic record and a degree with high mathematical and computing content, e.g. Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering or Physics, from a leading university
- Craftsman-like approach to building software; takes pride in engineering excellence and instils these values in others
- Demonstrable passion for technology e.g. personal projects, open-source involvement
- Intellectually robust with a keenly analytic approach to problem solving
- Self-organised with the ability to effectively manage time across multiple projects and with competing business demands and priorities
- Focused on delivering value to the business with relentless efforts to improve process
- Strong interpersonal skills; able to establish and maintain a close working relationship with quantitative researchers, traders, and senior business people alike
- Confident communicator; able to argue a point concisely and deal positively with conflicting views.
Work-Life Balance and Benefits
Proud to provide the best working environment possible for all of its employees, they are committed to equality of opportunity. They believe that a diverse workforce is a critical factor in the success of the business, and this is embedded in the culture and values. Running a number of external and internal initiatives, partnerships and programmes which help them to attract and develop talent from diverse backgrounds and encourage diversity and inclusion; they’re also a Signatory of the Women in Finance Charter.
They offer comprehensive, firm-wide employee benefits, including competitive holiday entitlements, pension/401k, life and long-term disability coverage, group sick pay, enhanced parental leave and long-service leave. Additional benefits are tailored to local markets and may include private medical coverage, discounted gym membership and wellbeing programmes.