Sr Software Engineer

Software Developer, Developer Productivity

Leading Quantitative Trading Firm

Chicago - On-site

$500K - $1M+ TC

We're representing one of the most respected quantitative trading firms in the industry. The firm runs lean by design, with one of the best PnL per head ratios you'll find anywhere, and stays selective rather than scaling headcount for its own sake.

Culturally, there's little separation between engineering, research, and trading. It's one centralized team supporting the whole business, so your work has a direct, visible line to the firm's PnL rather than sitting behind layers of process. Growth here is real: people who join early and prove themselves move quickly, including into senior and leadership roles. Despite its track record, the firm still moves at start-up speed on new ideas.

We're looking for an experienced software engineer to build and own the tools, pipelines, and automation that let engineers across the firm ship reliable trading software quickly and with confidence. You'll work across build and test infrastructure, CI/CD, environment provisioning, and internal tooling, and increasingly you'll be the one bringing AI-assisted engineering into day-to-day workflows, from wiring coding agents into the dev process to automating routine remediation. You'll partner directly with engineering teams firm-wide to find where friction slows people down and build the platform-level fixes that remove it.

You will need:

• Deep, hands-on experience with Python and its ecosystem
• A track record building or maintaining developer tooling, CI/CD systems, or build infrastructure at scale
• Real-world experience using AI coding tools or agents in a production engineering workflow (e.g., Claude Code, Codex), including writing configurations or skills for them. Model training or fine-tuning experience is not required
• Working knowledge of C++ and Java, plus strong Linux fundamentals
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on professional experience
• Clear communicator, comfortable working directly with engineering teams to surface and prioritize pain points
• Low-ego, equally comfortable working solo or as part of a team
• Background at a large, high-caliber technology company is a strong fit, especially candidates promoted quickly early in their careers. Prior exposure to trading or other fast-moving, high-stakes environments is a plus but not required