Java Distributed Systems Engineer - NYC - Fintech

Adaptive Financial Consulting•New York, NY

6d•$240,000 - $300,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Adaptive is a product-led financial technology company with deep expertise in capital, commodity, and digital markets. We build technology for investment banks, investment managers, fintechs, and capital markets service providers. Our consulting teams work with clients to implement and extend that technology, but our starting point is product engineering: solving difficult problems and building software that creates lasting competitive advantage. We are hiring a Java Distributed Systems Engineer to help build Aeron Sequencer, our technology for applying state machine replication to capital markets. You will work on distributed systems that enable other engineering teams to build performant, reliable software. This is a hands-on role with the opportunity to influence product decisions, architecture, engineering practices, and how we communicate our work.

Requirements

Experience designing, building, debugging, and operating distributed systems.
Strong experience developing server-side software in Java.
Experience designing and evolving messaging protocols or software libraries.
Experience using different forms of testing to support software quality, including correctness and performance.
Experience measuring, benchmarking, and profiling components or systems.
Strong written and verbal communication skills.
A collaborative approach, with a genuine interest in sharing knowledge and learning from others.
The judgement to prioritise competing demands based on long-term value and explain those priorities to stakeholders.
The confidence to challenge the status quo and suggest improvements, both technical and cultural.

Nice To Haves

Messaging technologies or deterministic, replicated state machines.
Low-latency, high-throughput, or predictable-performance systems.
Property-based testing or deterministic simulation testing.
Financial interchange protocols such as FIX or ITCH.
OMS, EMS, or exchange systems.
C, C++, or other programming languages.
Build tools and engineering automation, such as Gradle or GitHub Actions.
Cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
Container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes.
Pre-sales or customer-facing technical discussions.
Building a public technical presence through blogs, conference talks, or external video content.

Responsibilities

Analyse, design, discuss, and develop distributed systems based on replicated state machines.
Write clean, efficient, maintainable, and self-documenting Java code.
Design and evolve messaging protocols and software libraries.
Troubleshoot and debug Java applications and distributed systems.
Apply testing, benchmarking, measurement, and profiling to improve correctness and performance.
Participate in code reviews, pairing, and technical discussions to raise the quality of our work.
Contribute to product decisions, not just task execution.
Keep up to date with relevant software engineering technologies and practices.
Communicate technical decisions and priorities clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.