Trading Systems Engineer

Trading Systems Engineer

Chicago

Flow Traders is looking for an experienced Engineer who can elevate our GCP-focused platform-especially GKE-while maintaining strong Linux and networking fundamentals. Our trading platforms span both ultra-low-latency bare-metal systems and modern cloud-native services. This role bridges on-prem and cloud environments, strengthens global platform standards, and drives high-impact improvements that enhance reliability, reduce toil, and support time-sensitive trading workloads.

What You Will Do

• Serve as the US-based SME for our GCP platform with a strong focus on GKE workloads—working within globally aligned standards while contributing your own expertise to improve Terraform-driven infrastructure and shape cloud architecture across regions
• Identify and drive engineering improvements by researching pain points, reducing toil, and delivering high-impact solutions across our cloud and trading infrastructure.
• Leverage automation and IaC to manage and optimize Linux and Kubernetes environments spanning bare-metal, virtualized, and cloud-native systems—streamlining workflows and reducing operational friction.
• Strengthen platform reliability by improving global monitoring and alerting frameworks, incorporating adaptive and self-healing mechanisms to elevate operational responsiveness.
• Act as a senior escalation point for complex Linux/Kubernetes/Cloud issues, participating in on-call and ensuring thorough, well-reasoned incident resolution.
• Provide regional technical leadership while collaborating with global stakeholders to define and implement platform standards, architectures, and large-scale initiatives.
• Use AI-assisted engineering tools to accelerate analysis, troubleshooting, documentation, and operational automation.

What You Need To Succeed

• 7–10+ years operating complex production environments spanning Linux, Kubernetes, and cloud-native infrastructure.
• Deep Cloud experience, preferably within GKE or an equivalent stack (cluster ops, workload orchestration, networking, security, observability).
• Strong Terraform expertise for provisioning and managing secure, scalable infrastructure.
• Solid Linux fundamentals — performance tuning, debugging, networking, virtualization, and bare-metal experience.
• Strong scripting skills in Python and Bash for automation, tooling, and operational workflows.
• Experience with Kafka or similar streaming/data-pipeline technologies.
• Knowledge of Puppet/Ansible for configuration management and Foreman/Satellite for lifecycle and host management.
• Practical understanding of monitoring/observability (Prometheus/Grafana or similar) and modern alerting strategies.
• Strong Git-centric workflows and comfort with modern CI/CD practices.
• Ability to lead and influence technical direction at a regional level while collaborating effectively with global colleagues.
• An entrepreneurial mindset — proactively identifying gaps, reducing toil, and driving self-directed engineering improvements.

At Flow Traders, we acknowledge the importance of open and transparent communication whether it be with our employees, our stakeholders, or our local and global communities. When it comes to salary, Flow Traders uses reliable market research to create base ranges. Where candidates will fall within the range depends on a few different factors including but not limited to level of experience, location, and specific skill set. We also consider ourselves one global team, and to demonstrate that, all employees are eligible to share in the company's success through an annual discretionary variable remuneration allocated based on company, group and individual performance and contribution.

Per NYC salary transparency law, the total compensation for this role includes a base range of $190,000 to $235,000 plus annual discretionary variable remuneration.

Flow Traders does not accept unsolicited resumes from any professional staffing or search firms. All resumes, and any other information identifying potential candidates, submitted to any employee at Flow Traders via-email, the Internet or directly without a valid and signed search agreement will be deemed free to contact by Flow Traders without any restrictions and no placement fee of any kind will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Flow Traders.