Software Engineer

Algorithmic Trading System Software Engineer (C++ Trading System)

Company: Proprietary Trading Firm

Location: Chicago, IL (Chicago Board of Trade)

Employment Type: Full-time

Experience Level: 1–4 years (Financial services or trading technology experience required)

Salary: $90,000–$140,000 per year

Visa Sponsorship: Current or future visa sponsorship not available

Company Overview

We are partnering with a premier trading-focused technology firm headquartered at the Chicago Board of Trade. Technology sits at the core of everything they build, driving ultra-competitive high-performance trading systems, low-latency execution engines, and real-time financial data processing infrastructure.

Role Overview

They are seeking a driven and analytical Software Engineer with a background in financial services or proprietary trading environments to join their core technology team. In this role, you will design, optimize, and maintain critical backend components and execution pathways of their electronic trading platform across Linux and Windows environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain efficient, ultra-low-latency C++ components tailored for proprietary trading systems, quantitative data analysis pipelines, and exchange connectivity infrastructure.
• Write clean, reliable, and high-performance code adhering to modern C++ standards within a production financial environment.
• Debug, profile, and optimize existing mission-critical trading applications across Linux and Windows multi-platform environments.
• Work closely with quantitative researchers, traders, and systems engineers to implement trading strategy improvements, market data handlers, and core infrastructure enhancements.

Required Qualifications

• 1–4 years of commercial software engineering experience specifically within a financial services institution, proprietary trading firm, hedge fund, or high-frequency trading (HFT) environment.
• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Financial Engineering, or a closely related technical field.
• Deep knowledge of modern C++, memory management, standard template library (STL), template metaprogramming, and concurrency.
• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and computational complexity tailored for high-throughput financial systems.
• Hands-on experience developing and deploying software within Linux and/or Windows environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience building or optimizing low-latency trading systems, order routing gateways, or market data feeds (ITCH/OUCH, FIX protocol).
• Familiarity with network protocols and low-latency infrastructure optimization (kernel bypass, TCP/IP sockets, UDP multicast, RDMA).
• Practical production experience with multithreading, concurrent systems, lock-free programming, and cache-optimized data structures.
• Experience working with financial time-series databases or SQL databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL).
• Proven track record of performance tuning, bottleneck profiling, and hardware-software co-design within high-frequency or financial computing domains.