Lead Quantitative Developer

Lead Quantitative Developer

Location: London (Hybrid)

Type: Permanent

Introduction

This job spec outlines the primary responsibilities, technical domains, and operational expectations for the Lead Developer overseeing the EFX Trading platform. This is a hands-on leadership role with direct ownership over codebase quality, sprint velocity, and strategy performance.

Core Responsibilities

Programme & Sprint Delivery

  • Own the end-to-end delivery roadmap for the EFX Trading platform.
  • Act as Scrum Master for the team:
  • Run sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives.
  • Drive story refinement and backlog management in GitLab.
  • Monitor team velocity, identify blockers, and adjust delivery processes as needed.

Codebase Quality & Release Control

  • Lead final-stage code reviews prior to merge/deploy to ensure:
  • Stability, correctness, and performance impact.
  • Compliance with system architecture and modular design principles.
  • Maintain codebase health through refactoring, standardisation, and enforcing consistent unit/integration test coverage.
  • Coordinate release cadence and sign-off across environments; manage hotfixes and rollback protocols.

Trading Engine – Strategy Build & Optimisation

  • Design, implement, and refine strategy components within the core trading engine:
  • Execution models, signal interpretation, position sizing, risk limits.
  • Work closely with the trader desk to deploy and iterate strategies.
  • Perform strategy performance tuning using live and historical data.

Analytics & Monitoring

  • Maintain and extend Python-based analytics used for:
  • Execution quality analysis, latency profiling, P&L decomposition, and parameter tuning.
  • Integrate metrics with Prometheus/Grafana dashboards to track real-time and batch performance indicators.

System Architecture & Latency Management

  • Own performance across the trading stack:
  • Market data adapters, order gateways and execution logic.
  • Profile and optimise Java code for latency and throughput:
  • JVM tuning, GC management, thread pool optimisation, lock contention analysis.
  • Enforce system resilience under load and failover scenarios.

Common Libraries & Cross-Cutting Concerns

  • Maintain shared libraries and infrastructure:
  • Messaging abstraction, config loading, risk controls, time synchronisation, logging, and metrics.
  • Drive standardisation across components to reduce duplication and improve integration velocity.

Developer Oversight & Technical Direction

  • Guide team members via code reviews, technical design sessions, and mentorship.
  • Improve sprint throughput through unblock support, knowledge transfer, and engineering best practices.
  • Provide architectural direction and ensure scalability of the system as new features and strategies are introduced.

Supporting Responsibilities

Incident Response & Support

  • Lead production incident response, including real-time triage and post-mortem analysis.
  • Collaborate with support and infrastructure teams to maintain system reliability.
  • Own runbooks and on-call procedures.

CI/CD & Tooling

  • Maintain and improve GitLab CI pipelines:
  • Build validation, test execution, packaging, deployment workflows.
  • Own test environments and integration testing frameworks.
  • Ensure pre-release validation covers strategy, config, and performance baselines.

Stakeholder Communication

  • Interface with:
  • Trading desk: to gather feedback, prioritise strategy enhancements, and align on P&L targets.
  • Product: to deliver roadmap features and prioritise backlog.

Security & Auditability

  • Ensure all components comply with access controls, logging, and data handling policies.
  • Participate in periodic internal audits and security reviews.

Documentation

  • Maintain documentation for:
  • Architecture and system flow diagrams.
  • Strategy lifecycle and deployment mechanics.
  • Team onboarding and developer environment setup.

Internal Tooling

  • Maintain tooling for:
  • Strategy simulation and data replay.
  • Performance benchmarking.
  • Configuration control and environment setup.

Technology Stack

Hosting: Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

Pipeline: GitLab CI

Core System Development: Java, Microsoft SQL Server

Analytics & Performance: Python

Monitoring & Metrics: Prometheus, Grafana

Required Experience

  • Deep experience with VWAP, TWAP, Bollinger Bands, and quantitative signal execution.
  • Strong understanding of FX market structure, LP connectivity, market requests, and front/mid-office operations.
  • Proven ability to design and scale trading systems with clean architecture and robust failover.
  • Ability to join the project midstream and integrate seamlessly, no ramp-up curve.
Company
Steadman & Chase
Location
London, UK
Hybrid / WFH Options
Posted
Company
Steadman & Chase
Location
London, UK
Hybrid / WFH Options
Posted