Horse Racing Team: Senior Software Developer (Quant systems)

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Are you a creative problem-solver who thrives in a fast-paced, experimental environment? Do you relish the challenge of building prototype software quickly, testing ideas, and learning from failure as much as success? Mustard Systems is seeking a Senior Software Developer to join our talented Horse Racing trading team, where you'll collaborate with a unique blend of mathematicians, statisticians, international chess masters, and Countdown Octo-Champs to tackle some of the most complex and exciting problems in sports prediction.

The Horse Racing team specialises in predicting the outcomes of Horse Racing around the world with the primary focus of the team being building in-house sophisticated trading systems and predictive models. We are looking for a Senior Quantitative Software Developer to support our quant team by improving the engineering quality of our research and production systems. In this hands-on role, you will help enable more efficient quant workflows by designing and optimising our quant production systems to ensure they are robust, performant and scalable. You will work hand-in-hand with members of the quant team. This position reports to the Head of Technology, and is first and foremost a software engineering role, not a quant research role.

The ideal candidate will:

• Be familiar with software engineering best practices and have strong coding skills.
• Be able to refine and optimize quant code, improving research efficiency.
• Have an ambition to work in environments where the speed of development is prioritised over formal processes and approach work with a self-starter attitude.
• Have confidence to take ownership of projects and experiment with new ideas.

What You'll Do:

• Improve implementations of machine learning models developed in-house by the quant team (e.g. how fast models run on historical data).
• Be responsible for the software side and system design of production trade generation and backtesting systems from the ground up.
• Contribute to the design and changes of quant codebases to improve our speed of iteration and deployment, including when scaling to more data and models.
• Help develop tools to improve our research infrastructure, leading to gains in research efficiency.
• Collaborate with quants to productionize models. Part of this will involve willingness to understand how the models work.
• Be responsible for quant systems monitoring and alerting.
• Work with freedom to build software the way you want with minimal restrictions to following the status quo.
• Work predominantly in-office, fostering close collaboration and a team-driven approach and recognising the value of face-to-face teamwork for this role.

Requirements:

• Strong software engineering skills, with a focus on performance, maintainability, and scalability.
• At least 3+ years of experience in a commercial software engineering role.
• Proficiency in Python, particularly for numerical computing and machine learning, particularly numpy, pandas (both must haves).
• Good working knowledge of a fast language such as C / C++ / Rust.
• Understanding of production-level system design and architecture.
• Strong debugging, profiling, and performance-tuning skills.
• Basic familiarity with HPC infrastructure and tools.
• Proficiency in SQL, working with structured data stored in psql databases and optimizing queries.
• A business-focused mindset, with the ability to prioritize work based on its impact on trading and research outcomes.
• Strong interpersonal skills and willingness to collaborate with a team of researchers.

Our Tech Stack:

• Python 3.10+ for most of our development.
• C and Go for high-performance systems where needed.
• Linux servers.
• PostgreSQL for data storage.
• ZeroMQ and RabbitMQ for backend communication.
• Basic web front ends for internal tools.

In this role, you'll act as a senior member of the team, bringing your own creative ideas and experience to drive projects forward while mentoring others. You'll work alongside some of the sharpest minds in the industry, in a culture that values creativity, experimentation, and diversity of thought. If you're ready to make an impact by innovating at the cutting edge of sports prediction, we'd love to hear from you.

Your Portfolio or Personal Projects:

If you have built something outside of your day job, we're keen to see it. Whether it's a passion project, an experimental tool, or something a little quirky unrelated to this role, we'd love to hear about it.

Benefits:

• Comprehensive benefits, including: Competitive salary and significant bonus potential (up to 30%).
• Enhanced pension match with salary sacrifice option.
• Health insurance and life assurance.
• Sabbatical leave after five years.
• 33 days of annual leave (including bank holidays).

We have a hybrid working approach at Mustard Systems. We enjoy working and collaborating together and require people to be in our Hammersmith office four days a week. If you require any additional flexibility, please let our hiring team know as part of the recruitment process.