Job Description
The Algorithmic Trading Developer is responsible for the design, development, implementation and continuous enhancement of algorithmic trading, electronic pricing and market-making solutions within Global Markets. The role focuses on building high-performance, low-latency trading applications, execution algorithms, pricing engines and automation capabilities that support the bank's electronic trading and market-making strategies across FX, Fixed Income, Commodities and Equities.
Working closely with Traders, Quants, Product Owners, Business Analysts and Technology teams, the Algorithmic Trading Developer translates business requirements, market microstructure knowledge and quantitative models into scalable, resilient and production-ready technology solutions. The role contributes to both strategic platform evolution and day-to-day platform support, ensuring optimal performance, reliability and operational stability of electronic trading systems.
The Algorithmic Trading Developer is accountable for the full software development lifecycle, including solution design, coding, testing, deployment, monitoring and continuous improvement of trading applications. The role leverages modern software engineering practices, data analytics, automation and DevOps principles to accelerate delivery and drive innovation within the electronic trading ecosystem.
Reporting to the Platform Lead: Digital Pricing & Market Making (DPMM), the role plays a critical part in delivering business value through enhanced execution, pricing, risk management and market-making capabilities, while ensuring compliance with technology standards, risk controls and operational excellence objectives
Responsibilities:
The key responsibilities of the role are:
- Design, develop, test and support high-performance algorithmic trading, electronic pricing and market-making platforms across FX, Fixed Income, Commodities and Equities.
- Develop low-latency, high-throughput trading applications capable of processing market data, pricing and execution workflows in real time.
- Collaborate closely with Traders, Quants and Product stakeholders to translate trading strategies, pricing models and execution requirements into scalable technology solutions.
- Design and implement smart order routing, execution algorithms, market-making logic and automated trading workflows to improve execution quality and client outcomes.
- Build and maintain reusable frameworks, services and libraries that support trading, pricing, risk management, analytics and market connectivity.
- Optimize application performance through efficient design, profiling and tuning techniques, including algorithm complexity analysis, memory optimization and latency reduction.
- Apply low-latency engineering principles including lock-free programming, efficient object lifecycle management, cache-friendly data structures, asynchronous processing and Zero GC (Garbage Collection) design patterns where appropriate.
- Analyze system bottlenecks and continuously improve latency, throughput, resiliency and resource utilization across trading platforms.
- Develop robust market data ingestion, normalization and distribution services supporting multiple venues, liquidity providers and internal consumers.
- Implement resilient pricing, execution and risk management components capable of operating in highly available production environments.
- Work with other teams that perform academic research, quantitative analysis, simulation and back-testing to validate trading strategies, pricing methodologies and platform enhancements.
- Leverage data mining, statistical analysis and historical market data to identify opportunities for trading strategy improvement and automation.
- Build real-time monitoring, telemetry and analytics capabilities to support operational decision-making and platform observability.
- Generate actionable business and technical insights through data analytics, performance measurement and execution quality reporting.
- Identify and implement automation opportunities that improve operational efficiency, reduce manual intervention and mitigate operational risk.
- Participate in architecture reviews and contribute to the evolution of trading platform architecture and engineering standards.
- Develop solutions using modern Java engineering practices, including Java concurrency, reactive programming, distributed processing and event-driven architectures.
- Apply software engineering best practices, including object-oriented design principles, SOLID principles, domain-driven design patterns and microservices architectures where appropriate.
- Contribute to technical standards covering coding practices, design patterns, performance optimization and production readiness.
- Ensure all software is developed with appropriate controls around resilience, recoverability, observability, scalability and security.
Engineering & Development Practices:
- Develop production-quality code using Java and associated technologies, frameworks and libraries.
- Design and implement efficient algorithms with consideration for computational complexity, memory footprint and system scalability.
- Apply design patterns and architectural principles to improve maintainability, extensibility and platform resilience.
- Conduct code reviews and promote engineering best practices across the development team.
- Perform unit testing, integration testing, automated testing and performance testing to ensure delivery quality.
- Support continuous integration, continuous deployment and DevSecOps practices throughout the software development lifecycle.
- Manage source control, build pipelines and automated deployment processes.
- Ensure appropriate technical documentation is maintained for applications, services and platform components.
- Participate in proof-of-concepts and technology evaluations supporting innovation within electronic trading technology.
Platform Stability & Operational Excellence:
- Provide production support for trading, pricing and market-making systems operating in real-time market environments.
- Monitor platform health, latency and service availability using established observability and monitoring frameworks.
- Participate in incident management processes and contribute to the rapid diagnosis and resolution of production issues.
- Conduct root cause analysis and implement corrective actions for defects, incidents and platform vulnerabilities.
- Ensure platform resilience through capacity planning, failover testing, recovery procedures and proactive maintenance activities.
- Assist with release planning, deployment execution and production change management activities.
- Support platform upgrades, infrastructure improvements and technology modernization initiatives.
Stakeholder Management & Collaboration:
- Partner with Trading Desks, Quantitative Analysts, Product Owners and Technology teams to identify and prioritize platform enhancements.
- Communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Work closely with infrastructure, network, DevOps and security teams to ensure end-to-end platform effectiveness.
- Collaborate with external vendors, exchanges and technology service providers where required.
- Contribute to strategic initiatives that enhance electronic trading capabilities, execution quality and market competitiveness.
Risk, Governance & Controls:
- Ensure all solutions comply with bank technology standards, regulatory requirements and operational risk controls.
- Embed monitoring, auditability and operational controls into all trading platform components.
- Support internal and external audit activities through appropriate documentation and evidence gathering.
- Promote secure coding practices and ensure compliance with cybersecurity standards.
- Contribute to business continuity, disaster recovery and resilience testing activities.
Qualifications:
- Minimum: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Quantitative Finance, or related field.
- Preferred: ACI Dealing Certificate, RPEs. if not available willing to obtain to do training the first 12 months.
Experience & Skills:
- Minimum 8+ years' experience in software engineering, Java development or electronic trading technology environments.
- Proven experience designing, developing and supporting enterprise-grade Java applications in mission-critical production environments.
- Experience delivering solutions across the full software development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, architecture, development, testing, deployment and operational support.
- Strong experience developing distributed, event-driven and high-performance systems.
- Demonstrated experience working with Agile, DevOps and CI/CD delivery practices.
- Experience collaborating directly with Traders, Quantitative Analysts, Product Owners and business stakeholders to deliver trading and pricing solutions.
- Practical experience supporting production platforms within fast-paced financial markets environments.
- Experience performing root cause analysis, production troubleshooting and operational support of real-time systems.
Technical Expertise/Core Engineering
- Expert-level Java development skills, including modern Java frameworks, JVM tuning and performance optimization.
- Strong understanding of Object-Oriented Design (OOD), SOLID principles and enterprise design patterns.
- Experience with Spring Boot, Spring Framework, Maven, Gradle and modern development tooling.
- Experience with RESTful APIs, event-driven architectures, microservices and distributed systems.
- Strong understanding of software architecture principles and scalable platform design
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Important Closing Date Note
Take note that applications will not be accepted on the below date and onwards, kindly submit applications ahead of the closing date indicated below.
24/09/26
All appointments will be made in line with FirstRand Group’s Employment Equity plan. The Bank supports the recruitment and advancement of individuals with disabilities. In order for us to fulfill this purpose, candidates can disclose their disability information on a voluntary basis. The Bank will keep this information confidential unless we are required by law to disclose this information to other parties.