Morgan McKinley
Elite Low-Latency Java Engineers (FX & Cash Equities) 🚀
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Elite Low-Latency Java Engineers (FX & Cash Equities) 🚀
Are you an exceptional engineer looking to solve the hardest engineering problems in finance? I am currently partnering with an elite, highly prestigious technical vendor known for having an exceptionally high bar. They are routinely called in when other vendors are failing, and they operate in environments where engineering precision is non-negotiable.
We are securing top-tier talent for multi-year, mission-critical engagements with a tier-1 client's electronic trading desks.
📌 The Logistics
- Engagement: Open to both Permanent and Contract (Inside IR35) professionals.
- Compensation: Highly competitive top-of-market compensation (exact salaries and daily rates will be discussed directly with me on our intro call).
- Location: London based, requiring a strict commitment of a minimum of 3 days per week in the office.
- Visa Status: No sponsorship is available for these positions.
🛠️ The Mission
We are hiring for two specialized, high-performance domains: Cash Equities and Foreign Exchange (FX).
In either role, you will be tasked with architecting and building ultra-fast, event-sourced microservices from the ground up. You will tackle massive scale, deterministic latency, and highly concurrent workloads, building systems where microseconds matter and that must operate flawlessly under severe market volatility.
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🎯 Who We Are Looking For
Our client focuses heavily on quality over quantity and expects candidates to have a true "X-factor"—you must be smart, talented, articulate, and deeply motivated to do things well.
- You possess complete knowledge and deep mastery of modern Java, the JVM, and the Linux Operating system.
- You are a proven Subject Matter Expert in applications development within electronic or algorithmic trading systems.
- You demonstrate extensive mechanical sympathy, including a track record of targeted performance tuning, writing zero-allocation or garbage-free code, and avoiding GC pauses.
- You have a history of solid, long tenures (mostly 3+ years) on your CV, demonstrating that you invest in long-term missions and make good long-term decisions.
- You bring high EQ and excellent communication skills to the table, allowing you to communicate complex architectural decisions clearly to both engineering peers and quantitative front-office stakeholders.
💻 The Tech Stack
We do not expect you to know everything, but a strong background encompassing a combination of the following is required:
- Messaging: Aeron, Chronicle Queue/Wire, highly tuned Kafka, and ZeroMQ.
- Memory Management: Off-heap data structures, Direct ByteBuffers, Chronicle Map, and Unsafe APIs/VarHandles.
- Networking & I/O: Netty, epoll/kqueue (via JNI), SBE (Simple Binary Encoding), and FIX/FIXP protocols.
- Profiling: async-profiler, JMH, Java Flight Recorder (JFR) / Mission Control, and Linux perf.
- Advanced JVM: LMAX Disruptor, OpenHFT, advanced GC tuning (ZGC, Shenandoah, G1), and custom lock-free queues.
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🌟 Desirable X-Factors
- Deep domain expertise in either Cash Equities (order books, algorithmic execution) or FX market micro-structure and trading workflows.
- Hands-on experience with Citi's Ambrosia framework, Grafana, and KDB.
- Evidence of personal technical interests, such as side projects, and a true dedication to quality engineering.
Ready to make a move? If you have the technical depth to own complex project implementations from design to production and build commercial-grade systems, let's talk.
Drop me a DM or send over your CV to arrange a confidential introductory call today!
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