Senior C++ SWE
We are looking for a Senior C++ SWE for the infrastructure team of the HFT fund Spectral::Technologies.
Have you seen the latency on a service's critical path jump by 100−1000% from time to time, on a fully isolated core and with no heavy load? This happened to us in production recently. Solving it meant going through the possible causes systematically, from SMI and TLB shootdown to the writeback of dirty pages, confirming each hypothesis with hardware counters and tracing, and removing everything that could be removed. Some causes were fixed by configuration, some needed code changes, and some were fundamental hardware limits that had to be worked around in other ways.
If this sounds like "this is what I would like to work on", this vacancy is for you.
We build trading infrastructure for high-frequency trading (HFT): a large system that has to run stably with minimal latency at critical moments, under 10x the usual load. For this we use our own user-space network stack, sub-microsecond IPC, optimised data formats and more.
We are looking for a Senior C++ SWE who can solve problems at the level of the whole system: see the entire data path from the Ethernet frame to the executed trade and find the bottlenecks in it that others miss.
What you will do
Develop our own trading system in C++, from receiving exchange data to sending an order. Look for bottlenecks along the whole execution path, test hypotheses and take solutions to production.
Example tasks
- Connect a new exchange
- Find the source of latency spikes
- Keep the speed under load
- Understand how an exchange works
Stack and tools
C++ · Linux · User-space networking · Kernel bypass Profiling · Hardware counters · Tracing
What matters for this role
- Understand C++ performance at the level of memory and the CPU.
- Design reliable low-latency systems.
- Know networking below the socket API.
- Investigate system behaviour and own the result.
Nice to have
- Experience with kernel bypass, CPU and Linux tuning, market data processing, low-latency systems or FPGA.
- PnL and a performance-based bonus. Your income will reflect your personal contribution to the team's result (avg +50−100% of annual income)
- A strong team. Engineers from tier-1 companies and experienced industry specialists, winners and prize winners of olympiads in mathematics, programming and physics at the level of IMO, IOI and the All-Russian Olympiad
- Full care for employees: ー monitoring and help with keeping key health indicators ー health insurance with dental care ー company events in different parts of the world ー monthly events: sports and wellness activities from the company ー food in the office from the best restaurants
- Ownership of your area of responsibility. The resources you need, freedom to choose the approach, responsibility for the result
- Tasks that directly affect PnL. We have no "not very important" tasks: we organise the work so that your efficiency → 1
- An environment for deep work. No meetings for the sake of meetings, short feedback loops, performance coaching for personal productivity