At a Glance
- Tasks: Own and scale production infrastructure for live trading systems.
- Company: Join Axon Labs, a cutting-edge trading and research lab backed by top investors.
- Benefits: Competitive salary up to £200,000, performance bonuses, and meaningful equity.
- Other info: Work closely with founders and traders in a dynamic, high-stakes environment.
- Why this job: Be a founding hire and directly influence engineering standards and architecture.
- Qualifications: Experience in building production systems with a focus on reliability and performance.
The predicted salary is between 180000 - 200000 £ per year.
Axon Labs is a next-generation systematic trading and research lab. We combine machine learning, neuroscience-inspired architectures (the Axon Cognitive Architecture), and high-performance engineering to build decision engines that run in live markets, where reliability and precision translate directly into performance. We are backed by Northzone, a16z Speedrun, and Concept Ventures.
Pay range and compensation package:
- Competitive salary up to £200,000
- Performance-linked bonus
- Meaningful founding equity
The equity is real, and so is the upside if we get this right.
About the Role:
We are already live, with multiple strategies running in production across venues on infrastructure we built ourselves: real-time data ingestion, low-latency messaging, research compute, and monitoring. What we don't yet have is one engineer who owns that platform end to end. That is this role. You will take what works today, make it bulletproof, and scale it into a real infrastructure advantage. This is a founding hire. You will work directly with founders, researchers, and traders, set engineering standards, and have direct influence over architecture from day one.
Responsibilities:
- Production infrastructure across multi-region cloud and latency-sensitive environments
- Reliable systems for live trading, multi-venue market data ingestion, and research compute
- Deployment pipelines that ship strategy and model changes quickly and safely
- Observability across data quality, execution, strategy, and infrastructure
- Resilience: failover, disaster recovery, and operational readiness for systems that lose money when they’re down
- The path from research prototype to production service, with real testing and monitoring
- Security architecture: IAM, networking, secrets, access control
- ML-serving infrastructure: low-latency model serving, feature pipelines, and experiment tooling
Qualifications:
Likely background: You may come from Jane Street, D. E. Shaw, Two Sigma, Hudson River, Optiver, XTX, Citadel, an exchange or market-infrastructure business, or a top infra team at a serious technology company. You should have built and run production systems where downtime had a real cost, and you have supported researchers or traders.
Required Skills:
- Deep Linux and networking fundamentals
- Strong cloud experience, ideally AWS (compute, networking, IAM, storage, observability)
- Strong Python; C++ for latency-critical paths is a plus
- Container orchestration with Kubernetes (or equivalent)
- Infrastructure as code (Terraform or equivalent), CI/CD and release engineering
- Monitoring: Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, or similar
Platform Engineer employer: Axon Labs
Axon Labs is an exceptional employer for Platform Engineers, offering a dynamic work environment where innovation meets high-performance engineering. With competitive salaries, performance-linked bonuses, and meaningful equity opportunities, employees are empowered to make impactful contributions from day one. The collaborative culture fosters direct engagement with founders and industry experts, providing unparalleled growth opportunities in a cutting-edge field that thrives on reliability and precision.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Platform Engineer
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Axon Labs or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Axon Labs.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Axon Labs.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Axon Labs that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Platform Engineer
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Axon Labs.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Axon Labs and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Axon Labs
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Axon Labs uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
