Low Latency Developer Job Description Template

The low latency developer works on the parts of the system where the time between an input and an output decides whether the firm makes money. That covers market data ingestion, order entry, network paths and the operating system underneath them. The role demands measurement rather than intuition, since the sources of latency are rarely where people assume they are.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities

• Design and build low latency market data and order entry components
• Measure latency precisely across the full path and identify the real bottlenecks
• Tune operating system, network and hardware configuration for determinism
• Implement lock free and wait free data structures where justified
• Work with exchange connectivity and protocol specifications
• Build monitoring that captures latency distributions rather than averages
• Investigate jitter, packet loss and tail latency events
• Collaborate with traders on where latency actually affects outcomes
• Maintain deterministic build and deployment processes
• Document the performance characteristics of each component

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering or a related field

Required Skills and Experience

• 4+ years of low latency development in trading or a comparable domain
• Expert C++ with a deep understanding of what the compiler generates
• Strong Linux systems knowledge including scheduling and interrupts
• Experience with kernel bypass networking such as Solarflare or DPDK
• Rigorous approach to latency measurement and tail analysis
• Understanding of exchange protocols and market data feeds
• Ability to reason about concurrency without locks
• Discipline to optimize only what measurement justifies

Preferred Qualifications

• FPGA or hardware acceleration experience
• Direct exchange colocation and connectivity experience