HFT - Python Engineer - Low Latency Trading Infrastructure

About

A tier-1 proprietary trading firm is seeking a Python Engineer to join a high-performance engineering team supporting one of the firm's most successful trading businesses in the US. This leading prop trading business has established itself as a tech-first powerhouse through custom-built infrastructure, co-located execution, advanced networking, and sub-microsecond trading systems.

This is deep systems engineering, building the low-level Python services that power core trading infrastructure. You'll develop production-grade systems handling high-throughput market data processing, real-time analytics, execution workflows, and performance monitoring, all engineered to deterministic standards where system latency directly drives P&L.

The culture is uncompromisingly technical: elite software engineers who own the full stack from market data normalisation and event processing to low-latency services. The focus is pure infrastructure, solving scalability, reliability, and performance challenges.

The Firm's Technical Approach

This prop shop runs HFT-grade infrastructure across global markets:

• Execution stack: Kernel bypass networking, FPGA-accelerated feeds, microwave connectivity, tick-to-trade under 30μs
• Data processing: Lock-free structures, zero-copy pipelines, nanosecond timestamping, in-memory analytics
• Optimised Python: PyPy/Numba/Cython for hot paths, integrated with C++/Rust for critical components
• Distributed systems: Custom event-driven architecture, partitioned services, consistent state across 200+ venues
• Production engineering: p99 latency guarantees, deterministic replay, chaos testing, full-stack observability

Key Responsibilities

• Build Python services processing market data with strict latency SLAs and sub-ms response under peak load
• Implement high-throughput analytics engines, execution monitoring, and performance dashboards
• Optimise core infrastructure: custom protocol parsers, memory pooling, async processing, cache-conscious design
• Develop reusable platform components (data pipelines, execution services, observability frameworks)
• Own production systems end-to-end: live debugging, synthetic load testing, structured on-call rotation
• Collaborate with trading and infrastructure teams to solve scalability and reliability challenges

Candidate Profile

• Advanced Python systems engineering: Production experience optimising for throughput/latency (asyncio/trio, custom event loops)
• Infrastructure background: Kernel tuning, network optimisation, high-throughput systems, or similar
• 3+ years production software in demanding environments (trading, telecoms, gaming, real-time systems)
• Financial markets exposure is valuable, but engineering excellence is primary
• End-to-end ownership: Comfortable with ambiguity, principled trade-offs between speed/complexity/reliability
• Strong technical foundation: CS/Math/Physics degree or equivalent systems experience

Location

• Primary: New York
• Hybrid: ~3 days/week office presence
• Compensation: $350k–$500k+ total compensation (experience-calibrated)

This is for exceptional Python infrastructure engineers who want to build HFT-grade production systems at a tier-1 prop trading firm where every microsecond of performance improvement translates directly to commercial advantage.