Trading Systems Engineer

DRW is a diversified trading firm with over 3 decades of experience bringing sophisticated technology and exceptional people together to operate in markets around the world. We value autonomy and the ability to quickly pivot to capture opportunities, so we operate using our own capital and trading at our own risk. Headquartered in Chicago with offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, we trade a variety of asset classes including Fixed Income, ETFs, Equities, FX, Commodities and Energy across all major global markets. We have also leveraged our expertise and technology to expand into three non-traditional strategies: real estate, venture capital and cryptoassets. We operate with respect, curiosity and open minds. The people who thrive here share our belief that it’s not just what we do that matters–it’s how we do it. DRW is a place of high expectations, integrity, innovation and a willingness to challenge consensus.

Our Application Support team provides mission critical support for many of our proprietary and third-party trading systems as well as our proprietary middle and back-office systems. They support a wide variety of trading teams globally who are participating in markets such as equities, fixed income and cryptoassets. They perform technical support and engineering functions that include application support in testing and production environments, software deployment and configuration, and system monitoring.

What you’ll do in this role:

• Work as part of a team to establish best-in-class production support, efficient software deployment, configuration processes, and proactive monitoring, with a goal of anticipating and avoiding issues before they occur, minimizing downtime and quick recovery from any incidents.
• Ensure maximum trading system availability to avoid missing any key trading opportunities.
• Provide support for various trading groups’ production systems across a variety of asset classes and geographic locations deployed across a multi-platform production environment (primarily Linux with a little Windows).
• Develop proprietary process automation and monitoring tools and leverage third-party technologies as appropriate.
• Troubleshoot trading system production incidents resulting from internal (proprietary software / systems) or external factors (markets, data feeds, telecommunication lines).
• Automate software configuration and rollout procedures to reduce manual configuration errors and strive for flawless change management.
• Support core market connectivity and correspond with exchanges regarding trade order activity, connectivity, and other related technical support issues.
• Collaborate with traders, DBAs, development, back office, QA, infrastructure, technical support, business development and various management teams around the globe.
• Help end users and developers understand core trading and back-office systems to ensure efficient and correct use of available tools.
• Build documentation for common procedures, troubleshooting scenarios and system architecture.
• Coordinate efforts with other global support teams to ensure continuity and consistency of support in a 24x7 environment.

What’s needed in this role:

• Superior troubleshooting skills and the ability to navigate issues efficiently that do not have a pre-defined runbook process.
• Prior experience supporting high performance applications, process monitoring, and troubleshooting.
• Prior experience working with FIX protocol and alternative exchange protocols.
• Script development experience a plus.
• SQL experience including queries/updates/table creation/basic database maintenance.
• Linux & Windows platform support experience in a large-scale production environment.
• Experience supporting electronic trading systems; prior experience at proprietary trading firm preferred.
• Demonstrated knowledge of network communications, including use of multicast networking.
• Must have some flexibility in work schedule to help ensure team coverage; rotating on-call coverage required.
• B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent degree.
• Self-motivation and intellectual curiosity; desire to continually grow and always seek improvements in production support function.
• High level of ownership and accountability, reliability, and strong follow through.
• Ability to handle pressure and time constraints with composure; ability to multitask and context switch efficiently.
• Strong organizational skills, including ability to effectively plan and prioritize.
• Must have strong communication skills and demonstrate the ability to have clear and concise conversations, both written and verbal, with a variety of personalities.
• Must be able to quickly apply prior context to troubleshooting and communication efforts.