Systems Engineer

About Tower Research Capital

Founded in 1998, Tower Research Capital is a premier quantitative trading firm built on a high-performance platform and independent trading teams. With a 25+ year track record of innovation, Tower discovers unique market opportunities and fosters a culture where engineers and business support professionals thrive. Our engineers develop world-class electronic trading infrastructure, solving complex problems in low-latency programming, FPGA technology, hardware acceleration, and machine learning. Our Business Support teams are crucial to maintaining the platform that powers our global operations.

The Role

We are seeking a skilled Linux Systems Engineer to support, maintain, and enhance our firm's trading Linux infrastructure. You will provide day-to-day support, respond to emergencies, execute changes, troubleshoot issues, and resolve performance problems. A key part of this role involves contributing to the development and refinement of tools and systems for automating the provisioning, configuration, and monitoring of thousands of Linux servers. You will also manage essential core services (DHCP, LDAP, DNS, NFS) across on-premise, hosted data centers, and public clouds, and collaborate with the Cloud Architecture team on new designs and performance improvements for our trading systems in the cloud.

Responsibilities

• Support, maintain, and enhance the firm's trading Linux infrastructure.
• Provide day-to-day support for the Linux environment, including emergency response, change execution, troubleshooting, and performance issue resolution.
• Contribute to the development and refinement of tools and systems to automate the provisioning, configuration, and monitoring of thousands of Linux servers.
• Manage essential core services such as DHCP, LDAP, DNS, and NFS for on-premise and hosted data centers, as well as public clouds.
• Review existing and implement new designs for trading systems on the Cloud with the Cloud Architecture team.
• Improve the performance, resilience, availability, and observability of existing Cloud environments.
• Work within complex brownfield Cloud environments hosting 24/7 critical trading infrastructure optimized for high-frequency, low-latency, real-time processing using custom OS builds and highly specific Cloud platform configurations.
• Engage in a rotational on-call schedule, including early morning and weekend shifts, to provide timely support.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in the maintenance, operation, and administration of an advanced Linux environment.
• Comprehensive knowledge of operating system principles, with a focus on Linux internals.
• Competence in server-side networking, including understanding network protocols and configurations.
• Proficiency in developing automation and monitoring tools.
• Experience with configuration management, provisioning, and orchestration tools (e.g., Ansible).
• Good knowledge of Python and expert knowledge of Bash for scripting and automation tasks in a Linux environment.
• Understanding of Linux configuration management, source control, CI/CD, and automated deployment.
• Experience in continuous improvement and/or refactoring of infrastructure automation to enhance the stability, reliability, and performance of Cloud platforms in a fast-paced environment responsive to trading team requirements.
• Strong problem-solving skills with a methodical approach to technical challenges, effective communication, strong interpersonal skills, a sense of responsibility, and commitment to project completion.
• Comfort using AI in day-to-day activities.
• Strong expertise in AWS compute, networking, and storage services (EC2, ENA, VPC, ELB, Direct Connect, S3, EBS) in the context of low-latency performance engineering, including Linux OS and kernel tuning for EC2 and AWS networks.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with container technologies such as Docker and/or Kubernetes.
• Participation in open-source or personal projects.
• Certifications in AWS DevOps Engineer Professional or AWS Advanced Networking.

Benefits

Tower Research Capital offers a stimulating, results-oriented environment where smart, driven people thrive. Our benefits include:

• Generous paid time off policies.
• Savings plans and other financial wellness tools.
• Hybrid working opportunities.
• Free breakfast, lunch, and snacks daily.
• In-office wellness experiences and reimbursements for select wellness expenses.
• Company-sponsored sports teams and fitness events.
• Volunteer opportunities and charitable giving.
• Social events, happy hours, and celebrations throughout the year.
• Workshops and continuous learning opportunities.

We foster a collaborative and welcoming culture with no unnecessary hierarchy or ego, where great people do great work together.