Senior Software Engineer - Data Engineering

Akuna Capital - Chicago, IL

Full-time - Mid Level

Chicago, IL

About the position

The Senior Software Engineer on the Data Engineering team at Akuna Capital plays a vital role in leveraging data as a competitive advantage for the firm. This position involves designing, building, and maintaining systems and infrastructure to manage Akuna's data assets, ensuring that data is trustworthy, reliable, and accessible for various business units. The role requires collaboration with multiple teams to drive high-impact projects and the development of data pipelines within a hybrid cloud architecture.

Responsibilities

• Drive the ongoing design and expansion of the data platform across various data sources.
• Work closely with Trading, Quant, Technology & Business Operations teams to identify data production and consumption processes.
• Build and deploy batch and streaming pipelines to manage Big Data sets using Kubernetes/EKS, Kafka/MSK, and Databricks/Spark.
• Mentor junior engineers in software and data engineering best practices.
• Produce clean, well-tested, and documented code for mission-critical applications.
• Build automated data validation test suites to ensure compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLA) regarding data quality and availability.
• Challenge the status quo to advance the organization's technology stack.

Requirements

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Math, or equivalent technical field.
• 3+ years of professional experience developing software applications.
• Java/Scala experience required; Python experience is a significant plus.
• Prior hands-on experience with data platforms and technologies such as Delta Lake, Spark, Kubernetes, Kafka, ClickHouse, and/or Presto/Trino.
• Experience building large-scale batch and streaming pipelines with strict SLA and data quality requirements.
• Excellent communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated experience working with diverse data sets and frameworks across multiple domains.
• Recent hands-on experience with AWS Cloud development, deployment, and monitoring.
• Experience working on an Agile team employing software engineering best practices, such as GitOps and CI/CD.

Nice-to-haves

• Financial data experience is a strong plus.