Director, Staff Engineer (Low Latency)
At a Glance
- Director-level technical leadership role in a high-growth prediction markets trading firm
- Core stack: Java, Aeron, Hydra, Kafka - exchange and clearing infrastructure at microsecond precision
- Hybrid- 3 days in the Belfast office.
- Salary: £100,000 - £135,000 + highly attractive bonus and benefits package
- 8+ years experience required - deep low-latency distributed systems background essential
About the Company
Our client is building the premier prediction market platform in partnership with major institutional players in global financial markets. Their platform empowers traders to take positions on real-world events, generating market-driven forecasts that turn intuition into insight for leaders and decision makers. The engineering team operates at the frontier -- building exchange and clearing infrastructure that processes at genuine institutional scale with the highest standards of financial integrity.
The Role
This is a Director-level technical leadership role focused on the evolution of the firm's low-latency, high-throughput exchange and clearing systems. You will help architect the core infrastructure, drive system design decisions, and deliver hands-on contributions across performance, scalability, and reliability. This role is designed for an engineer who thrives on solving hard problems in financial markets, has deep expertise in low-latency systems, and can operate with microsecond precision at scale while maintaining the highest standards of financial integrity.
Key Responsibilities
- Help architect, implement and maintain core exchange and clearing infrastructure, ensuring it is performant, scalable and ultra-reliable
- Provide technical leadership and hands-on contributions to system design patterns, frameworks, protocols and data architectures
- Build ultra-low-latency and high-throughput messaging architecture using Aeron and Hydra frameworks
- Design storage and retrieval patterns for market data, trade history, positions and audit trails at high volume
- Collaborate with the Product team and stakeholders to design technical solutions for new financial products
- Participate in on-call rotations and respond to production incidents requiring deep technical troubleshooting
- Set and uphold engineering standards across the platform, mentoring less senior engineers where appropriate
What You'll Need
Essential:
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building high-performance, low-latency distributed systems
- Expert-level Java proficiency including concurrency primitives, memory management, JVM internals and performance optimisation
- Proven experience with Aeron, Hydra or comparable low-latency messaging frameworks
- Track record of building systems handling 100,000+ messages/second, sub-millisecond p99 latency and 99.99%+ uptime
- Experience with financial markets technology order books, matching algorithms and derivatives products
- Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related discipline
- Eligibility to work in the US on a permanent, indefinite basis (no visa sponsorship available)
Desirable / Nice to Have:
- Direct experience with prediction markets, binary options or exchange-level clearing systems
- Exposure to financial data architecture at scale --trade history, positions, audit trails
Why Apply?
- £100,000 - £135,000 salary with a highly attractive bonus and benefits package
- Director-level technical leadership with genuine architectural influence not a management track
- Work on exchange-grade infrastructure at institutional scale with microsecond precision
- Relocation support to Chicago or New York for the right candidate
- Join a well-backed, high-growth firm at a formative stage with major institutional backing
- Build alongside engineers from the top tier of global financial markets technology
How to Apply
If you believe you meet the criteria for this role and are excited about the opportunity, please apply via the link. Alternatively, reach out to Phil Gamble directly for an informal chat via LinkedIn or WhatsApp.
About Phil Gamble
Phil Gamble has over 21 years of experience recruiting in global software engineering markets, delivering high-quality technical hires for scaling organisations. His relationship-driven approach ensures candidates are supported throughout the entire process.
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