Lead Software Engineer

About Us  

MarketAxess is on a journey to digitally transform one of the world’s largest financial markets, enabling the shift from analog, phone-based trading to a fully electronic marketplace. Why does this matter? Because our platform makes trading fixed-income more accessible, ultimately improving transparency, efficiency, and competition in the marketplace. Changing the way an established industry transacts is no easy feat. There will be twists and turns, because no one’s ever done this before. But now, more than 2,000 clients around the world rely on our solutions, and that number is only expected to grow in the years ahead. We know where we’re going. How we get there is up to us. Join us and help Take Us There.  

The Role

We are seeking a hands-on Lead Engineer to join our team who has a passion and expertise in helping us build our next-gen Trading Workstation. 

The ideal candidate is someone who has demonstrated experience in building and operating highly scalable, available, and fault-tolerant Trading platforms across a range of technologies. You should be passionate about technology, architecture, software engineering and quality, and innovatively addressing business problems. You will work with the team to collaborate on software solutions and architecture and ensure exceptional software engineering practices, and good documentation.

It’s essential to be willing to take on new skills to meet the shifting demands of accelerating our modernization efforts to the public cloud and Kubernetes world. Feedback from your users should be something that you look forward to, as you will work closely with the Product and Engineering to incorporate their needs into the team’s roadmap and use it as a measure of success. A critical success factor is being viewed as a trusted partner and collaborator, including business and technology stakeholders. 

We embrace a culture of collaboration and experimentation while striving and encouraging all team members to focus on continuous improvement and learning. We openly welcome diverse perspectives and people who are not afraid to challenge assumptions and prior ways of working. Otherwise, how do we innovate, learn and grow as a team and individuals?   

How You'll Help Take Us There

You will demonstrate competencies across five key dimensions: 

• Interpreting business needs and setting strategy - Provide technical vision, drive strategy around solutions, solve complex problems, and act as the technical owner across strategic efforts for which your team(s) are responsible. 


• Project Execution and Applying Technology - Own the services your team delivers – from requirements gathering, design, development, testing, to production – and support the platform, while establishing repeatable processes and methods that ensure high productivity, quality, and reliability. 


• Providing Architecture Guidance - Define the principles, guidelines, standards, and solution patterns to ensure solution decisions are aligned with the firms target-state architecture vision. Create deliverables like standard definitions, reference models and architecture designs to support architectural governance to assess the impact of new and ongoing technology investment. 


• Team Leadership - Lead a team of engineers in identifying and implementing well-architected, cloud-native solutions that deliver the best possible experience for our clients and engineering teams. Mentor software engineers on the team, and through code reviews, ensure that all work meets team and industry standards. 


• Assessing Technology - Facilitates the evaluation and selection of software product standards and services, as well as understanding emerging technology trends and disruptions and their practical application to enable new and evolving business capabilities. 

What You Bring to the Table  

• 10+ years of experience of progressive software engineering experience, with 5+ in cloud computing environment (e.g., applications, infrastructure, storage, data, and platforms) 


• Adept at building and designing events driven architecture with Java and Kafka (KStreams)


• 3+ years of streaming and event processing architectures and platforms (e.g., Kafka)  


• Ability to plan, estimate, and manage the technical aspects of project execution and delivery 


• Have a product mindset that is deeply empathetic to customer needs, strategic in orientation, and metrics and outcomes-driven 


• Ability to leverage GenAI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot or equivalent) to accelerate development and improve code quality.


• Applying AI-driven practices such as prompt engineering and AI-assisted code reviews to boost productivity and reduce delivery time while mitigating risks.


• Comfortable with ambiguity and adapting to changing requirements, with a proactive bias towards action 


• Good understanding of product management, agile principles and development methodologies and capability of supporting agile teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact, and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt. 


• Comfortable delivering presentations to senior-level executives and technical audiences. 


• Minimum of 3 years of people management experience leading global teams.    


• E-trading and financial services industry, FIX Protocol experience is a plus. 

What We’re Looking for

• A proponent of strong collaborative software engineering techniques and methods: agile development, continuous integration, code review or pairing, unit testing, refactoring and related approaches.  


• Ability to articulate and document architectural decisions and roadmaps at a senior executive level. 


• Demonstrated ability to understand the long-term ("big picture") and short-term perspectives of situations. 


• Proven ability to build and maintain effective, trusting partnerships with product managers, architects and technical leads for individual products and applications. 


• Ability to propose and estimate the financial impact of solution architecture alternatives.


• Trusted and respected as a thought leader who can influence and persuade business, IT leaders and engineering teams.


• Technology neutral: remains unbiased toward any specific technology or vendor choice and is more interested in results than personal preferences. 


• Displays humility, drive, intellectual curiosity, and integrity. 


• Motivated and driven by achieving long-term business outcomes. 


• Ability to work effectively in a team environment and lead cross-functional teams. 

What You Can Expect from Us

• Hybrid Environment: Our employees enjoy a mix of working in the office and from home


• Free Food: We provide free lunch for employees when they are working in the office. Plus, our offices are stocked with snacks


• Paid Time Off: Competitive PTO package including vacation and personal days, sick leave and charity days


• Generous Parental Leave: Up to 20 weeks fully paid leave


• 401(k): Dollar-for-dollar employer match up to $17,500


• Wellness Stipend: We provide employees with up to $1K annually towards gym memberships, home office equipment and more


• Onsite Healthcare: We offer convenient access to world-class care through Mount Sinai at our Hudson Yards location


• Tuition Assistance and Professional Development: Benefit from live and on-demand learning, role-specific training, employee-led Lunch and Learns and guest speakers


• Core benefits: Highly competitive medical, dental, and vision programs

For job positions in NYC, NY, and other locations where required, the estimated salary range for a new hire into this position is $200,000 USD to $250,00 USD. Actual salary may vary depending on job-related factors, which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. You may also be eligible for annual cash incentives, equity, and other benefit programs.

MarketAxess Corporation and its affiliates provide equal employment opportunities to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic in the location in which the candidate is applying.

All of your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.