Lead Developer – Real Time Investment Data Systems

hackajob is collaborating with Vanguard to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role.

We are seeking a Lead Developer to work on the design and delivery of real‑time and time‑series data platforms within our investment management technology team. This role combines hands‑on engineering with domain expertise, setting direction for systems that underpin market data, trading, portfolio, and analytics workflows used by Portfolio Managers, Traders, and Quant teams.

In this role you will:

• Act as the lead developer for real‑time and historical data platforms, including integration with vendor platforms like OneTick and real-time data providers like Bloomberg, Refinitiv etc., and will be responsible for design, implementation, engineering standards, and production stability.
• Work closely with our business and IT leaders to understand the requirements, propose scalable solutions and set engineering standards around performance, resilience, data quality and observability while remaining deeply hands‑on during the implementation phase.

Key Responsibilities:

• Understand the evolving business requirements and use the domain knowledge to lead the design and implementation of real-time and time-series data services.
• Work closely with architects and developers to make pragmatic architectural decisions balancing business urgency, scalability and long-term maintainability.
• Remain deeply hands-on in design and implementation of critical components.
• Set engineering standards around performance, resilience, data quality, and observability.
• Review code and designs, focusing on correctness, performance, and operational readiness.
• Design schemas, partitioning, and data lifecycle strategies for large‑scale intraday and historical datasets.
• Lead integrations with vendor platforms and ensure consistent, reliable data across internal consumers.
• Optimize query performance and data access patterns for PM, Trader, and Quant use cases.
• Own production stability for business‑critical data systems, particularly during trading hours.
• Define and enforce best practices for monitoring, alerting, incident response, and root‑cause analysis.
• Proactively identify performance bottlenecks, scalability risks, and operational weaknesses.
• Mentor engineers, providing technical guidance and raising overall team capability.

What It Takes:

• Proven significant professional software engineering experience combined with significant domain expertise gained from building real-time data platforms in investment management domain.
• Strong experience in integration with real-time vendor platforms like OneTick, and strong experience in time-series databases and analytical platforms.
• Strong hands-on experience in Java, Python and other programming languages, and building scalable services on AWS.
• Proven experience acting as a Lead Engineer on mission critical systems involving real-time streaming and messaging technologies on Cloud infrastructure (AWS).
• Deep understanding of financial time‑series characteristics (high volume, bursty data, corrections, late data) and proven ability to design scalable schemas and query models for both intraday and historical analytics.
• Strong understanding of market data, orders, executions, positions, portfolios, and pricing.
• Experience balancing latency, storage efficiency, and analytical flexibility.
• Familiarity with vendor data ecosystems (e.g. Bloomberg, Refinitiv, MarketAxess).
• Experience delivering platforms used directly by PMs, Traders, and Quant teams.
• Strong ability to influence technical direction and mentor senior and junior engineers.

Special Factors:

• Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.
• This is a hybrid position and would require you to work in the office 3 days per week (Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday).

Why Vanguard?

Vanguard is a different kind of investment company. It was founded in the United States in 1975 on a simple but revolutionary idea: that an investment company should manage its funds solely in the interests of its clients. This is a philosophy that has helped millions of people around the world to achieve their goals with low-cost, uncomplicated investments. It's what we stand for: value to investors.

Inclusion Statement:

Vanguard’s continued commitment to diversity and inclusion is firmly rooted in our culture. Every decision we make to best serve our clients, crew (internally employees are referred to as crew), and communities is guided by one simple statement: “Do the right thing.” We believe that a critical aspect of doing the right thing requires building diverse, inclusive, and highly effective teams of individuals who are as unique as the clients they serve. We empower our crew to contribute their distinct strengths to achieving Vanguard’s core purpose through our values. When all crew members feel valued and included, our ability to collaborate and innovate is amplified, and we are united in delivering on Vanguard's core purpose: to take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success.

How We Work:

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.