Aquis Exchange on cord

Aquis Exchange

Rapid Application Engineer

External position
London, UK
Hiring internally for Aquis Exchange?
Finance · FinTech
Tomorrow's markets, today.
Posted
4 days ago
Checked
cord regularly checks that external positions are still open
2 days ago

Skills & Experience

Job roles: Back End
Experience level: Mid
Core skills considered: Linux, Python, Git, SQL
Other skills considered: Kanban, CI/CD, Docker, Agile

Logistics

Base salary: Undisclosed
Some companies on cord are unable to disclose salaries publicly due to internal company policies. Message the company for salary information.
Employment type: Permanent
Remote working: Hybrid
Visa sponsorship: Not available

Job Description

In this role you will be working with the Product, Infrastructure, QA, and Operations teams to solve complex problems at speed. Unlike our Low Latency team who build the exchange engine itself, the RAD (Rapid Application Development) team lives at the intersection of troubleshooting, innovation, and operational efficiency. You'll be investigating the toughest production issues, validating new trading technology approaches through rapid prototyping, and building the internal tools and test frameworks that keep Aquis running smoothly.

You'll be part of a small, high-impact team that combines detective work with creative engineering. One day you might help investigate a performance anomaly in one of our trading workflows; the next, you'll be building a utility to help QA stress-test a new feature or writing scripts to analyse performance bottlenecks. You're starting a journey where problems are often ambiguous, priorities shift quickly, and learning from more experienced colleagues will accelerate your growth significantly.

To succeed as a Mid-Level RAD Engineer, you will be a proponent of agile principles and modern software best practices. You can produce clean, well-tested code and collaborate effectively with the development team. Ideally, you will have worked in environments where code reliability and performance matter, whether that's systems programming, embedded systems, or previous experience in critical infrastructure. This role will develop your operational mindset: understanding not just what systems do, but why they fail and how to prevent it.


Responsibilities and Duties

Investigate production issues and platform behaviour:

Help diagnose system problems with guidance from senior engineers; work to create reproducible test cases and diagnostic frameworks that validate root causes; learn to identify patterns and root causes; document findings clearly so the broader team can learn.

Support rapid prototyping efforts:

Implement features and approaches in POC code; write clean, testable code even under time pressure; validate technical approaches and gather feedback for the Product team.

Build tools and utilities for internal teams:

Develop test utilities, diagnostic scripts and monitoring tools that help Operations and QA teams work more effectively and validate fixes reliably.

Code, test, integrate, and document software:

Produce high-quality code with appropriate test coverage; participate in code review; maintain clear documentation and commit messages.

Learn the platform and systems architecture:

Actively invest in understanding how Aquis' market data, order matching, and trading workflows operate; build mental models of system behaviour so you can spot anomalies.

Apply computer science fundamentals:

Use your understanding of algorithms, data structures, networking, and systems design to break down complex problems.

Escalate appropriately and ask for guidance:

Work independently but recognize when issues need senior involvement; leverage your team's expertise.


Skills and Experience


Essential

  • 4+ years professional C++ development experience (C++11 or later), in any domain, e.g. finance, systems, embedded, or other high-performance contexts.
  • Comfortable working with core networking concepts: TCP, UDP, multicast
  • Linux experience: Able to navigate Linux systems, use common debugging tools, and understand basic system concepts (processes, file descriptors, memory, etc.).
  • Python, Git, and SQL: Comfortable writing scripts, using version control, and querying data.
  • Kanban and CI/CD: Comfortable with Kanban workflow, Jira, continuous integration, and rapid iteration.
  • Writing well-tested code and creating reproduction environments: Able to write effective test cases, establish diagnostic frameworks, and set up reproducible environments that help isolate and validate fixes for complex issues.
  • Analytical mindset: You enjoy investigating "why" something happened and can break down complex systems into understandable pieces.
  • A genuine desire to learn trading technology: Curiosity about how financial markets work and how exchange technology fits into that ecosystem.
  • Team player mentality: You collaborate well, give and receive feedback gracefully, and take initiative without needing constant direction.
  • Comfortable using AI tools in development: Familiar with LLMs, coding assistants, and AI-powered tools for writing code, debugging, generating tests, and exploring solutions.

Desired

  • Real-time or event-driven systems: Any experience where latency, throughput, or deterministic behaviour matters (e.g., gaming engines, robotics, HFT platforms, telecommunications).
  • Boost libraries: Exposure to or experience with Boost (threading, networking, utilities, etc.).
  • Capital markets protocols: Familiarity with FIX or other exchange-related protocols or standards.
  • Performance analysis: Experience with profiling, optimization, or working on latency-sensitive code.
  • QuestDB or Dolt: Time-series or version-controlled database experience.
  • Open-source contributions, side projects, or competitive programming: Evidence that you pursue engineering challenges outside of work and enjoy problem-solving for its own sake.
  • Shell scripting (Bash): For automation and system-level tasks.
  • Docker/containers: Growing relevance for modern development workflows.

Mindset and Methodology

  • Intellectually curious: You're genuinely interested in understanding how systems work, why they fail, and how to make them better. You ask good questions and learn from both successes and failures.
  • Delivers incrementally: You understand that done is better than perfect. You can deliver a working MVP, validate it with stakeholders, and iterate based on feedback.
  • Self-directed learner: You take ownership of understanding the Aquis platform and trading technology. You read code, ask questions, and invest in deep learning without constant prompting.
  • Good team player: You collaborate well across teams, take feedback constructively, and help colleagues succeed.
  • Autonomous but seeks guidance wisely: You work independently on well-scoped tasks but recognize when issues need escalation or expertise beyond your current level.
  • Comfortable with production operations: You understand that code runs in production with real traders depending on it. You think about reliability, observability, and operational concerns, not just features.
  • Growth mindset: You're early in your career relative to senior engineers, and you're excited about the opportunity to learn from experienced colleagues and grow your skillset.
Rapid Application Engineer at Aquis Exchange
Position posted 4 days ago

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Starling Bank on cord

Starling Bank

Full Stack Engineer (ML Ops)

London, UK
FinTech · Banking · Finance
A better bank for everyone
Active
over 6 months ago
Responds to
0% of requests
Responds in
1h 55m
Requests
7 pending

Skills & Experience

Job roles: Full Stack
Experience level: Mid, Senior
Core skills considered: Java, React, Redux, AWS, JavaScript

Logistics

Base salary: £70K - £110K
Employment type: Permanent
Remote working: Hybrid (up to 2 remote days p/w)
Visa sponsorship: Not available

Job Description

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! Our vision is fast technology, fair service, and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! We built a new kind of bank because we knew technology had the power to help people save, spend and manage their money in a new and transformative way.

We’re a fully licensed UK bank with the culture and spirit of a fast-moving, disruptive tech company. We’re a bank, but better: fairer, easier to use and designed to demystify money for everyone. We employ more than 3,000 people across our London, Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester offices.

Our technologists are at the very heart of Starling and enjoy working in a fast-paced environment that is all about building things, creating new stuff, and disruptive technology that keeps us on the cutting edge of fintech. We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions regardless of what your primary responsibilities may be, innovation and collaboration will be at the core of everything you do. Help is never far away in our open culture, you will find support in your team and from across the business, we are in this together!

The way to thrive and shine within Starling is to be a self-driven individual and be able to take full ownership of everything around you: From building things, designing, discovering, to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and making sure all processes are efficient and productive to deliver the best possible results for our customers. Our purpose is underpinned by five Starling values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.

Hybrid Working

We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Starling - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person. We don't like to mandate how much you visit the office and work from home, that's to be agreed upon between you and your manager.

Our Data Environment

Our Data teams are excited about the value of data within the business, powers our product decisions to improve things for our customers and enhance effective and agile decision making, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be. Hear from the team in our latest blogs or our case studies with Women in Tech.

We are looking for talented data professionals at all levels to join the team. We value people being engaged and caring about customers, caring about the code they write and the contribution they make to Starling. People with a broad ability to apply themselves to a multitude of problems and challenges, who can work across teams do great things here at Starling, to continue changing banking for good.

Requirements

We have built our entire banking platform in house and mostly in Java. We are looking for people who want to work on building the tooling that is used by our engineers on a daily basis.

We are looking for people who are truly full stack, and are as comfortable polishing their javascript front end as they are debugging the innards of their java applications database interactions, or standing up infrastructure with terraform. We are looking for people who can:

  • Design REST apis.
  • Code backend services, ideally using Java, or another other server side compiled language.
  • Develop modern front ends, ideally using React and Redux.
  • Get their code into the cloud and support it there, ideally on AWS.
  • Believe in clean coding, simple solutions, automated testing and continuous deployment.
  • Like to take ownership of a feature from the original idea through to live.
  • Think (like us) that a small number of empowered developers is the right way to deliver software.

Company Benefits

  • 33 days holiday (including flexible bank holidays)
  • An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
  • 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
  • Part-time and/or flexible hours available for most roles
  • Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
  • Life insurance at 4x your salary
  • Hybrid/remote working
  • Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
  • Generous family-friendly policies
  • Varied social groups set up and run by our employees
  • Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
  • Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing

Full details are available on our careers site

Interview Process

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:

  • Stage 1 - 30 mins with one of the team
  • Stage 2 - Take home challenge
  • Stage 3 - 90 mins technical interview with two team members
  • Stage 3 - 45 min final with an executive and a member of the people team
Alex Yeates on cord
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