Contract Senior Software Engineer (Java or Python)

Contract Senior Software Engineer (Java or Python) | Inside IR35
Contract length: 6 months (with potential to extend)
Location: London
Working Environment: On-site

You will be joining a private equity firm as a senior software engineer, to work across the following responsibilities:

• Develop and support P&L, accounting, and returns-calculation applications across trading books
• Build and extend our Client Reporting Framework
• Add instrument and asset class coverage in our Trade Repository system
• Manage data exchange with third-party vendors via SFTP and AWS S3
• Use AI coding assistants (Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to compress delivery timelines while maintaining full code ownership and quality accountability
• Collaborate with quant researchers and traders to translate complex financial requirements into auditable, production-grade code
• Provide production support, working with Platform and SRE teams as needed

 Key Requirements: 
Technical:

• 8+ years commercial experience in Python or Java across the full development lifecycle
• 5+ years in financial services (buy-side strongly preferred)
• Solid relational database skills; MS SQL Server a strong plus
• Snowflake experience required
• Familiarity with AWS (S3, Lambda, EC2, Glue or similar)
• Proficiency with Git, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tooling (e.g. Datadog)

AI & Tooling:

• Proven, hands-on experience shipping production code using AI coding assistants such as Claude, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot
• Demonstrable examples where AI tooling reduced delivery time by 2x or more on a meaningful task
• Strong prompt engineering skills and the ability to critically evaluate AI-generated code for correctness, security, and financial accuracy

Desirable, but no essential:

• Experience with Apache Airflow or similar workflow schedulers
• REST or GraphQL API design experience
• Knowledge of fixed income, FX, or derivatives products and associated P&L/risk methodologies