Senior Engineer

About Pico

Pico fuels the global capital markets community by providing managed infrastructure solutions and market data that enable clients to efficiently scale their businesses and rapidly access global markets.

As experts at the intersection of financial markets and technology, we deliver infrastructure, connectivity, cloud, and market data solutions that support clients throughout the entire trading lifecycle. Pico is headquartered in New York with offices in Chicago, Dublin, London, Belfast, Madrid, Krakow, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, and Sydney.

Purpose of the Role

Pico is seeking an experienced Sr. Engineer to manage and optimize the end-to-end latency for critical market data deployments.

Key Responsibilities of the role: (to include but not limited to)

• Analyze Latency Needs and the help in design, testing and developing Redline InRush software for market data and configure the software to meet those needs
• Collaborate with developers to optimize the software to reflect deployment use case and modify configurations to achieve latency objectives
• Optimize network topology to achieve lowest latency in network

Utilize experience with network modeling and simulation, and programming in C/C++ and Java to build automation tools for capacity measurement and capacity planning.

• Build models using Java to simulate what if scenarios for measuring capacity
• Automate capacity measurement and estimation using C/C++ to simulate network failures
• Measure current software capacity against performance thresholds
• Develop tools using programming in C/C++ and Java to measure and simulate capacity of the software and network
• Analyze trends and predict changes for future capacity expansion using prediction models and stochastic functions

 Perform and record benchmark latency statistics using tools like VMWare and MYSQL.

• Create a variety of models using VMWare and other measurement frameworks to record performance and latency benchmark

• Store the results in MYSQL database for querying and retrieving performance benchmarks across different deployments
• Map results from the MYSQL database against deployment Service Level Agreements and suggest corrective actions

 Monitor and maintain client production computing networks and applications.

• Ensure that the Redline InRush and Redline Execution Gateway software continues to function through changes and upgrades
• Design each piece of the monitoring software to monitor Redline Software deployments and plan how the different pieces will work together
• Gather requirements to create a real time alerting framework for critical customers and create high level design for the monitoring and alerting system
• Perform routine maintenance and software upgrades
• Approve network changes from vendors and ensure production environments are stable during changes

Run tests to benchmark scalability as well as identify bottlenecks and suggest scalability performance improvements.

• Design repeatable and deterministic tests for benchmarking Redline Software scalability 
• Create framework for automatically running these tests with every release and every deployment
• Analyze the results and suggest changes to the software and configuration based on results and findings of the test
• Run repeatable and deterministic tests for Network performance and expansion. Suggest Networking changes based on changing patterns in performance.
• Identify system, hardware and software vulnerabilities and compare the performance changes after suitable patches are applied

Monitoring the computing & reporting performance of all applications

• Design the monitoring framework for capturing system and software performance
• Create a reporting and analytics tool to routinely report performance to stakeholders

• Create an alert generation framework for reporting deviation in performance after changes

Analyze system behavior to fully characterize system components (e.g., the behavior of OS, virtual machines, CPU, I/O subsystems, memory modules, and networks) as well as application behavior.

• Develop software to gather performance statistics from operating system for all subsystems including disk, I/O, CPUs, memory, network
• Determine change in application behavior based on delta in parameters
• Analyze and benchmark system characteristics and its impact on Redline InRush and Execution Gateway Software performance.
• Characterize behavior of Redline Software on virtual machines and compare with physical hardware across generations.

Build, validate, maintain, and refine high performance characterizations of enterprise computing environments.

• Create tools to automate validation of distributed computing systems
• Create automation for deploying Redline Software and characterize system behavior
• Design validation tests to measure and isolate delta in performance

Perform technical writing and maintain internal technical system documentation.

• Document every aspect of Redline API and Software documentation
• Create Runbooks and processes for documenting change and outline deployment methodology
• Create UML diagrams, flowcharts, high level system design documents for software development of Redline Automation Tools

Analyze and provide Customer Service on technical issues via technical troubleshooting, debugging and testing, and recommending technical escalations.

 

• Provide debugging builds and code for troubleshooting during outages
• Provide triage on production trading systems running Redline Software and escalate internally as needed
• Field technical customer escalation calls and provide guidance on debugging, testing and isolating production issues with the Redline Software.

Manage all changes to the production trading environment like software changes, hardware platform upgrade, release management, and checkouts.

• Ensure that the Redline InRush and Execution Gateways continue to function without disruption through software maintenance and testing
• Create Technical Runbooks and Change Management processes for all changes in the production environment
• Provide guidance on stable software upgrades and create a path to rollout of Redline Software on production trading systems
• Coordinate and manage expectations on hardware changes
• Recommend checkout processes after Deployment of Redline Software upgrades and help with testing post installation

 Linux system administration.

• Configure Linux users and assign appropriate user permissions for seamless working with Redline InRush and Execution Gateway
• Configure the BIOS, sysconf and other low level operating system parameters for lowest latency
• Modify the Redline Software to be compatible with different versions of Linux including RedHat Enterprise Linux and CentOS 

 Act as a conduit between customers and internal engineering developers.

• Gather core technical requirements from customers and translate them into internal requirements for engineering team
• Conduct requirement analysis and generate high level software design including models and flowcharts for prioritization with other software developers

 Customize Redline applications to each end-client and use-case and provide release management.

• Identify core technical requirement for each customer use case

• Document every aspect of trading systems to allow normal functionality through changes and upgrades. including guidance on Redline software and configuration customized to the client core use case
• Proactive bug scrubbing to recommend software upgrades to impacted customers and suggest releases and verify backward compatibility

 

Research published benchmarks, system specifications, and other available technical resources.

• Routinely gather performance improvements and published benchmarks for hardware, network and software by organizations like STAC, HPE and Intel and update Redline with the latest development in technology

Coordinate with other developers to further optimize Redline deployments using the latest innovations in technology

 

Bachelor's Degree is required in Computer Science or Computer Engineering or Computer Information Systems

 

Salary is commensurate with candidates knowledge and experience.

Salary range: $130k-$200k

 

IMPORTANT DATA PRIVACY INFORMATION: 

This position is available with Pico Services Inc. The controller of your personal data will be Pico Services Inc.

For further information on what personal data we collect, how we will process your personal data and your rights with respect to your personal data please read our Pico Job Candidate Privacy Notice, View Here.