Engineering Squad Lead: Backend Exposure Team

Hello, we're IG Group. We are an FTSE250 FinTech company who run mobile, web and desktop platforms that help our clients trade stocks & shares, leveraged products, Futures & Options and Crypto. We are ambitious. Over 340,000 people already use our platforms. We're global with offices in 18 countries and products in 16 regions. We're hungry to move faster, ship better product for our customers and grow our user base. We believe in high autonomy, and we want people who are looking to do things differently in order to create better experiences for our customers. We work in cross-functional teams and are laser-focused on increasing the number of active clients we serve to drive sustainable growth.

Your team

Exposure is a business-critical platform at the heart of IG's OTC trading operations, comprising two essential components:

• Risk Calculation & Management: The system calculates real-time exposure across client positions and automatically manages IG's risk by initiating intelligent hedging orders in the underlying markets.
• Data & Intelligence: It provides vital real-time data to our trading desks, quants, and risk teams, enabling informed decision-making across the business.

The Technology

The core platform is built in C++ for low-latency performance, with newer, less time-sensitive components developed in Python. The system encompasses over 60 applications that combine positions and pricing in real-time, executing sophisticated hedging strategies via our DMA execution systems. Our algorithms balance hedging urgency with optimal price performance and minimal market impact.

The Challenge & Opportunity

We're focused on a critical evolution: enhancing our release maturity and delivery cadence while maintaining the exceptional uptime standards our stakeholders depend on and continuing to deliver high-value features to the business. This requires engineering excellence, strategic thinking, and collaborative problem-solving.

What This Means for You

You'll work on technology that directly impacts IG's trading performance, collaborating with trading desks, quants, and risk teams. You'll help shape our engineering practices while working with cutting-edge, low-latency systems that process millions of pounds in trades daily.

Your role in the Team's Success

Lead the team behind technology that directly impacts IG's trading performance—cutting-edge, low-latency systems processing millions of pounds in trades daily. You'll define the vision for stakeholder success and build an empowered team where engineers own and deliver their work independently. Through mentoring and constructive challenge, you'll develop individuals who confidently engage with trading desks, quants, and risk teams. Your leadership will foster a culture of growth and knowledge sharing while influencing across departments to deliver shared outcomes. You'll also drive significant modernisation opportunities across applications, deployment, and infrastructure—balancing innovation with operational excellence.

What you'll do

• Build and deliver a team vision - this should encompass both stakeholder wants & needs for the future and a technology roadmap
• Renovate – the legacy parts (i.e. the core) of the system need renovation so you can release with minimum downtime in the week. At present, it’s locked into a two-week release cycle due to low maturity and unacceptably long release downtime
• Build a collaborative team culture - trust and support each other, be positive in the face of adversity
• Empower the team - you shouldn't be a single-point-of-anything and should listen, grow, and challenge the team to own and deliver their goals
• Organise - work with stakeholders and the department head to ensure work is planned, elaborated and executed on time and within budget
• Hands-on - you must be a hands-on C++ & have some experience with Python; be able to deliver code yourself to production
• Innovate - as a leader, you'll need to encourage the team to innovate and innovate yourself as well as maintain existing systems
• Support - ensure that systems run within their agreed SLOs and SLAs and set the standard for the team by example

What you'll need for this role

Key Qualification Requirements:

• Proficient with the latest C++ standards and modern software design practices and principles
• Experience with, or keen to learn, Python as we use it in our Acceptance framework and some apps
• Risk management – ideally experience with trading, exposure/risk and hedging execution
• Experience with renovating legacy systems whilst concurrently delivering on new work
• Driven - you must want to improve both yourself and the systems you work on
• Ownership - you will be the key contact for systems and own every win and learn from every failure
• Curious about our product and the technology, caring about our clients and their user experience and unafraid of the complexity that comes with regulatory risk
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with great attention to detail
• Track record of driving improvement and operational efficiency

How we work

We try to take a thoughtful approach to our ways of working as a company. We follow a hybrid working model with 3 days in the office -- which we think balances the need to collaborate effectively and connect with each other. When it comes to how we deliver, there are 5 things we want everyone to do to drive high performance, better learning and career satisfaction:

• Lead and Inspire: Drives trust, alignment, and enthusiasm
• Think Big: Focus on the problems that most impact commercial outcomes
• Champion the client: Understand and prioritise client's needs
• Deliver at pace: Push for fast, sustainable growth;
• Raise the bar: Take ownership, be accountable and share feedback

We believe that diversity is vital to success, it fuels creativity, drives innovation and sets us up for global success. We're committed to building teams with a variety of perspectives and skills to help us realise our vision and strategy, that's why we encourage applications from people with diverse backgrounds and experiences to join us on this journey.

The Perks

Your growth fuels our success! Thrive with tailored development programs, mentoring opportunities with leaders, and clear career progression. Expand your network through committees, sports and social clubs. Enjoy extra time off for volunteering and community work.

• Competitive salary
• Flexible Benefits Package on top of your salary (12%)
• Private medical cover for you and your family
• Life insurance
• Contribution to gym memberships
• 25 Days holiday, with 1 additional day off to celebrate your Birthday & 2 additional days off a year for voluntary work (28 in total)
• The option to buy or sell holiday days.
• Unlimited access to the LinkedIn Learning Platform
• A comprehensive global and local onboarding process
• Employee-led LGBTQ+, Women’s, Black and Parents & Carers networks with an annual budget for organising events & projects that foster an open, diverse and inclusive culture
• Enhanced primary (maternity), secondary (paternity), and shared parental pay and leave, as well as a range of support and benefits for parents
• Option to participate and create ESG initiatives based on IG Brighter Future Fund

Join us for this exciting journey.