Senior Engineering Manager – Investment Risk – Up to £180K + bonus

Durlston Partners are working with a leading global investment firm that specialises in a wide range of strategies, including hedge funds, private equity, and active trading. With a reputation for innovation and excellence, we are dedicated to delivering superior returns for our clients.

They are in search of a hands-on Engineering Manager or a Lead Level Software Engineer capable of overseeing a small team. The successful candidate will have responsibilities encompassing coding, team management, business analysis, and ensuring efficient project and agile practices.

They need an individual who can influence their team members positively, as opposed to being dictatorial. It values someone who fosters an environment where team members have a voice, make decisions, and contribute equally as part of a cohesive team. If you are uncomfortable with diverse opinions that challenge your own, this role may not align with your preferences.

In the complex landscape of Investment Risk, characterised by nuanced aspects, legacy systems, and high aspirations, the selected candidate will be accountable for their team’s performance. They will also receive guidance and directives from senior leaders. The company values an individual who views this guidance as constructive and genuinely seeks to comprehend the overarching strategy, approaching their interactions with humility toward both team members and stakeholders.

The ideal candidate is a technologist who can multitask effortlessly – from writing unit tests while coding to querying APIs for analytical insights, from delving into legacy SQL queries to decipher portfolio setups, to monitoring logs for insights, and ultimately using these experiences to create elegant code, all while managing complexity adeptly. This ability is highly prized.

The organization is looking for someone who not only understands SOLID/TDD principles but is also comfortable with modernizing a legacy stack into AWS. Beyond that, the company values engineers who grasp risk and portfolio data to the extent that they take ownership of the components they deliver.

The team is currently focused on constructing a suite of next-generation n-tier, cloud-native applications. These applications, led by a product called riskFolio, utilize modern cloud technologies to support Risk Analysts, Portfolio Managers, and Quants. This leadership role is hands-on and provides an opportunity to address intricate business, logic, data, and technical challenges. Interested individuals are encouraged to apply.

Role Summary and Job Responsibilities

• Manage a development team to successfully deliver projects meeting predefined objectives.
• Exhibit exceptional leadership skills and hands-on expertise to drive project components to completion.
• Empower engineers to conceptualise and develop architectural solutions for business challenges in line with enterprise architecture standards.
• Utilise people management skills to coach, mentor, and develop team members.
• Assume responsibility for the quality, total cost of ownership (TCO), maintainability, and security of the solutions produced by the team.
• Offer timely feedback and coaching to individuals and teams, utilizing data to reinforce learning.
• Resolve differences of opinion and foster team alignment toward specific goals or solutions.
• Take ownership of technical debt within the development team.

Software Lifecycle Leadership

• Provide valuable feedback on designs created by team members, asking insightful questions that solidify choices and reveal erroneous assumptions.
• Encourage strategies to simplify systems.
• Identify opportunities for reducing maintenance costs with a significant and quantifiable impact.
• Proactively identify technical risks before they jeopardise projects.
• Address cross-team dependencies early to ensure project success.
• Promote the use of existing Technology or off-the-shelf solutions, considering potential trade-offs.

Requirements

• Experience in leading large software development projects in terms of team size, technical complexity, and organizational complexity.
• Proficiency in implementing scrum ceremonies, even when faced with day-to-day delivery pressures.
• Software engineering experience with data, microservices, frameworks, and platform development.
• Strong coding skills and a solid working knowledge of .Net, along with proficiency in one or more additional programming languages such as .NET Core/C#, Typescript, Javascript, Python, Java, etc.
• 3+ years of experience in business systems analysis or working with data and data analysis is preferred.
• Experience in designing and delivering frameworks focused on data pipelines, data catalogs, data distribution, and advanced analytics.
• Proficiency with various open-source frameworks and development tools, including .Net Framework (Standard/Core), AWS Lambda and Step Functions, SNS, SQS, S3, NoSQL databases, Git/Unity, ReactJS/Modern UI frameworks, etc.
• Exposure to concepts such as object-oriented programming, quality assurance, parallel programming, databases, and networking.
• Understanding of ATDD (Acceptance Test-Driven Development), TDD (Test-Driven Development), and test automation, with a desire to write simple, adaptive, and iterative code.

Highly Desirable

• Experience in building containerized applications and deploying them to public or private clouds, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or similar providers.
• Familiarity with modern front-end frameworks like React or equivalent.
• Proven working knowledge of Risk analytics platforms (e.g., MSCI, Bloomberg PORT, Barclay’s POINT) and derivatives.
• Participation in open-source projects, such as maintaining a well-curated blog, contributing to open-source software, or having a presence in the community.
• Certification as a Scrum Developer or Scrum Master.
• Experience in front-office software development within an Asset Management, Hedge Fund, or Investment Bank.