Tech Lead Application Developer

HarbourVest Partners • Boston, MA

2d • $160,000 - $240,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

For over forty years, HarbourVest has been home to a committed team of professionals with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to deliver impactful solutions to our clients and investing partners. As our global firm grows, we continue to add individuals who seek a collaborative, open-door culture that values diversity and innovative thinking. In our collegial environment that’s marked by low turnover and high energy, you’ll be inspired to grow and thrive. Here, you will be encouraged to build on your strengths and acquire new skills and experiences. We are committed to fostering an environment of inclusion that promotes mutual respect among all employees. Understanding and valuing these differences optimizes the potential of both the individual and the firm. HarbourVest is an equal opportunity employer. This position will be a hybrid work arrangement. You will receive 18 remote workdays per quarter to use at your discretion, subject to manager approval. For example, you may choose to work in the office 4 days per week and take one remote day weekly (typically 13 weeks per quarter), leaving 5 additional remote days to be used as needed. Seated within our Quantitative Investment Science group, this position leads efforts to remove computational bottlenecks. It also optimizes heavy model execution across our platform. This engineer will own performance strategy, establish SLOs, and mentor the team on performance-first thinking. This ensures QIS can support more users, data, and complexity without slowing down. This role suits senior engineers who thrive on making systems blazing fast and want to develop the technical direction of a high-impact quantitative team. The ideal candidate is someone who has: Extensive knowledge in Python performance tuning and low-level computation A track record of dramatically improving system performance (10x+ improvements) Experience setting and enforcing performance SLOs across a team Strong mentorship instincts and cross-functional collaboration skills A passion for finance and quantitative systems

Requirements

• High-level skill in optimizing Python efficiency (profiling, memory management, GIL considerations)
• Extensive experience in numpy, pandas optimization, and vectorized computation
• Production experience with cython, numba, or rust for performance-critical code paths
• Proficiency with profiling tools (cProfile, py-spy, memory_profiler, flame graphs)
• Understanding of database query optimization and data access patterns
• Experience establishing and tracking performance SLOs in production systems
• Strong system build skills with performance and scalability in mind
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving technical standards
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (Azure preferred) and distributed computation patterns
• 7+ years development experience, with 2+ years leading technical initiatives or mentoring engineers

Nice To Haves

• Experience with financial data, time series analysis, or quantitative modeling

Responsibilities

• Profile and optimize the most expensive functions and data transformations across the platform
• Introduce incremental and vectorized computation methods with numpy, cython, and rust when suitable
• Establish and enforce performance SLOs (P95/P99 compute latency) and efficiency budgets
• Partner with the Data Optimization engineer to ensure efficient data flow between storage and computation
• Mentor team members on performance analysis, profiling techniques, and optimization patterns
• Lead technical build reviews with a performance-first lens
• Reduce model runtime from hours to seconds for core bottom-up and top-down analytics

Benefits

• This role is eligible for a discretionary annual bonus, which is determined based on individual and overall firm performance.
• In addition to salary and bonus, total compensation may include eligibility for long-term reward programs and a comprehensive total rewards package that may include retirement, health, insurance, paid time off, and wellness programs.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees