Principal Software Engineer

• Inside IR35
• Hybrid - London

Role Overview:

We are seeking an exceptional Senior / Principal Java Developer with extensive front-to-back trading systems expertise to join our delivery team on a high-profile engagement with a tier-1 global investment bank.

This is a rare opportunity to work on a greenfield trading technology platform, providing significant scope to influence architecture, technical direction and engineering standards from the outset. The role will involve solving complex engineering challenges around ultra-low latency, high throughput, scalability and distributed systems.

You will work closely with senior technologists, architects and front-office stakeholders to design and deliver resilient, production-grade systems supporting critical trading workflows across multiple asset classes.

Experience with digital assets / crypto technologies would be advantageous, particularly where this has involved institutional trading, market infrastructure or distributed systems.

Key Requirements:

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on server-side Java.
• Extensive experience developing systems within front-office or middle-office trading environments.
• Proven experience delivering production-grade technology for tier-1 global investment banks, hedge funds or systematic trading organisations.
• Strong understanding of front-to-back trade lifecycles, including order management, execution, booking, risk and downstream processing.
• Broad multi-asset experience, ideally covering several of:
• FX
• Fixed Income / Rates
• Equities
• Credit
• Commodities
• Deep expertise in modern Java, including concurrency, multithreading, JVM performance and memory management.
• Strong hands-on experience designing and developing high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems.
• Extensive experience with messaging, event-driven architectures and streaming technologies.
• Strong understanding of scalability, fault tolerance, resilience and distributed-system design patterns.
• Experience designing systems where latency, throughput and horizontal scalability are critical architectural considerations.
• Ability to operate at both hands-on engineering and architectural levels, contributing to technical strategy while remaining close to the code.
• Excellent understanding of software engineering principles, design patterns, clean architecture and automated testing.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with developers, architects, traders and other front-office stakeholders.
• 10+ years' commercial software engineering experience, predominantly in Java.
• Significant experience building and supporting mission-critical trading platforms within a major investment bank, hedge fund or systematic trading environment.
• A strong track record of delivering complex, high-performance Java systems into production.
• Demonstrable knowledge of trade lifecycles and trading workflows across multiple asset classes.
• Hands-on experience with high-performance messaging and distributed systems.
• Proven ability to design systems for high throughput, low latency and horizontal scale.
• Strong knowledge of Java concurrency and performance optimisation, including the ability to diagnose and resolve complex performance issues.
• Experience working within greenfield or highly transformational technology programmes, ideally where you have had significant influence over architecture and technical design.
• The ability to work independently on complex technical problems while collaborating effectively within a senior engineering and delivery team.

Desirable : Experience with crypto / digital asset technologies, institutional digital-asset trading, or other blockchain-based financial-market infrastructure.