Senior Software Engineer

Our client is an elite proprietary trading firm founded by MIT and Harvard alumni, consistently clearing upwards of 40% YoY returns across equities and futures with a hyper-lean team of just 30 people. Operating at the intersection of top-tier academia and high-performance trading, this is arguably the most intellectually rigorous environment in the industry right now, and they are quietly building one of the most profitable operations in quant finance.With nearly half of the firm holding PhDs from the world's leading institutions, they have combined extreme academic talent with cutting-edge execution. Now they are hiring Software Engineers and Quantitative Developers in C++ and Python to build the next generation of their trading platform. This is an opportunity to join a lean, high-density room where the code you write is the strategy in production, and your technical decisions directly impact PnL.What you'll doBuild and optimize the computational infrastructure that powers core research and portfolio construction.Work side by side with PhD researchers, turning new ideas into production trading systems in days, not quarters.Tackle genuinely hard computer science problems related to performance optimization, memory management, CPU utilization, and cache management.Design custom software to process large-scale market data in both distributed and non-distributed environments.Write complex multi-threaded code involving locks and lock-free primitives.Own problems end to end with no layers between you and the result, and see the direct impact of your work on the firm's PnL.What you bring7+ years of software development experience with strong C++ skills, low-level debugging, and resource optimization.A degree from a top-tier university or an exceptional academic track record, including highest honors, distinctions, or a top-percentile GPA.Elite problem-solving ability. Many on the team hold medals in international olympiads (IMO, IPhO, IOI) or top rankings in the Putnam or competitive programming contests.A deep, intrinsic love of hard technical problems: you enjoy performance puzzles, clean abstractions, and understanding systems all the way down.Intense intellectual curiosity, whether that's chess, mathematics, or building things for fun.Experience navigating large, complex codebases that are responsible for critical systems.Nice to haveA Master's degree or PhD in Operations Research, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, or a related quantitative discipline.Prior contributions to performance-critical open-source projects such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, XGBoost, MKL, LLVM, or operating system kernels.Experience building or optimizing batch data processing systems, scientific computing pipelines, or quantitative research platforms.Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) or GPU programming (CUDA, OpenCL).Why this roleRare talent density: work on an elite team of about 30, founded by MIT and Harvard alumni, where nearly 50% hold PhDs from top global institutions.Phenomenal performance: join a proven, privately funded firm compounding at 40%+ YoY.Direct impact: no middle management or corporate red tape, just a flat structure where great engineering shows up immediately in results.Elite compensation: Base salaries up to $450k | First-year packages with fully guaranteed bonuses structured to approach or surpass $1.2M+ total cash.Interested? Reply and Goliath Partners will be in touch. Spots on this team are extremely limited.