Performance Engineer

As a Performance Engineer at IMC, you will play a pivotal role in analysing, optimising, and tuning our systems interaction with exchange systems holistically. Working closely with cross-functional teams, you’ll be tasked with uncovering performance improvements across the trading stack. This role combines technical ingenuity with creative problem-solving to outsmart competition in one of the most demanding technical landscapes.

Your Core Responsibilities

• Black Box Reverse Engineering and Analysis: Analyse and understand the behaviour of complex systems using black-box techniques, identifying performance bottlenecks and optimisation opportunities. Designing and performing statistical experiments to explain emergent real world phenomena.
• Experimentation & Prototyping: Design, implement, and test innovative ideas, experiments and technologies. Develop quick internal prototypes to evaluate performance and real-world applicability.
• Collaboration & Communication: Liaise effectively with traders, software and hardware engineers, and infrastructure teams to share insights and implement solutions.
• System Analysis: Analyse terabytes of network data to identify patterns, validate hypotheses, and optimise system performance.

Your Skills And Experience

While not all of the below is required a deep understanding in at least one of the following areas would be an advantage

• Strong understanding of computer internals, Linux systems, and networking. Familiarity with tools and techniques for reverse engineering, kernel tuning, system-level optimisation, and low-level network optimisation.
• Proven commercial experience with Python and/or languages like C++ or Java.
• Familiarity with low-latency hardware technologies, such as Intel CPUs, FPGA, and microwave links.
• Understanding of complex, bespoke networks and networking stacks.
• Hands-on experience with performance tuning, and system-level optimisations.
• Experience with data and system analysis.
• Capable of working autonomously while contributing to a multidisciplinary team. Always looking for ways to gain an edge.

About Us

IMC is a global trading firm powered by a cutting-edge research environment and a world-class technology backbone. Since 1989, we’ve been a stabilizing force in financial markets, providing essential liquidity upon which market participants depend. Across our offices in the US, Europe, Asia Pacific, and India, our talented quant researchers, engineers, traders, and business operations professionals are united by our uniquely collaborative, high-performance culture, and our commitment to giving back. From entering dynamic new markets to embracing disruptive technologies, and from developing an innovative research environment to diversifying our trading strategies, we dare to continuously innovate and collaborate to succeed.