OPEN Senior KDB / q Software Engineer

Senior KDB+ / q Software Engineer

Prime Brokerage Risk & Margining | Inside IR35 | £730 per day (Umbrella) | London Hybrid

We're currently looking for an experienced Senior KDB+ / q Software Engineer to join a leading financial services organisation on an initial 13-week contract. This role will suit a hands-on engineer with deep expertise in KDB+/q development, real-time data platforms, and Prime Brokerage post-trade risk and margining environments.

Working within a high-performing engineering team, you'll be responsible for the development, optimisation, support and enhancement of business-critical applications and data platforms supporting front-office and risk functions.

Contract Details

Contract Length: 13 weeks
Start Date: ASAP
Rate: £545 per day Umbrella
Engagement: Inside IR35
Location: London (30 Fenchurch Street)
Working Model: Hybrid

The Role

You will play a key role in developing and supporting large-scale KDB+ platforms that process and distribute high-volume market and business data. The successful candidate will bring strong domain expertise within Prime Brokerage, Financing, Securities Lending, or Risk Management, allowing them to quickly contribute to complex post-trade workflows and risk calculations.
Key responsibilities include:

Designing, developing and optimising KDB+/q solutions within large-scale production environments.
Enhancing real-time market and business data ingestion, processing and distribution capabilities.
Managing and optimising KDB ticker plant, RDB/HDB architectures and historical data platforms.
Supporting data feed onboarding, integration and data quality controls.
Troubleshooting complex production issues and providing Level 3 support for critical applications.
Working closely with business users, traders, quantitative analysts and technology stakeholders.
Supporting platform reliability, monitoring, root cause analysis and continuous improvement initiatives.
Integrating KDB platforms with wider technology ecosystems including Java, Python and messaging technologies.

Essential Skills & Experience

10+ years' commercial experience developing with KDB+/q.
Strong experience working within large-scale production environments.
Deep understanding of Prime Brokerage post-trade risk and margining.
Strong knowledge of time-series data modelling.
Experience with KDB ticker plant, RDB/HDB architectures and performance optimisation.
Proven production support and troubleshooting experience.
Experience within Financing, Securities Lending, Prime Brokerage or Risk domains.
Experience integrating KDB platforms with Java and/or Python applications.
Knowledge of event-driven and messaging architectures such as Kafka.
Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Desirable Experience

Experience working directly with trading desks and quantitative teams.
Platform reliability engineering and monitoring expertise.
Exposure to enterprise-scale financial market data platforms.
Experience improving data quality frameworks and controls.

Qualifications

Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics or a related technical discipline
Only candidates based in UK and eligible to work in UK are allowed