Senior Java Systems Engineer - Platform Exchange / Matching Engine

About the role

WE ARE:

At Adaptive, we are a technology provider firm that partners with capital, commodity, and digital market participants to build custom front-office technology, messaging systems, and trading infrastructure. Our experienced teams design and deliver complex front-office technology solutions using our proven accelerators to create long-term competitive advantage.

Our clients include the world’s leading investment banks, investment managers, fintechs and capital market service providers. With a global reach, with offices in London, New York, Barcelona, Montreal, and Manila, we have a proven track record of delivering powerful, elegant and intuitive trading technology solutions, and we value technical pragmatism, collaboration, and clear communication.

We're looking for a Senior Java / Systems Engineer with significant experience in Platform Exchange Systems to design, deliver, and optimise production-ready, high-performance, low-latency technology using Aeron.

YOU ARE:

- A hands-on engineer who enjoys designing and optimising low-latency Java services and protocols across the full delivery lifecycle.

- Someone with genuine experience building Matching Engines and Platform Exchange Systems.

- Driven by evidence-based engineering, automated testing, benchmarking, and profiling rather than guesswork.

- A clear, confident communicator who can work across domain boundaries in a collaborative Agile environment, rather than being siloed into a single technology stack.

YOU HAVE:

- Strong server-side, low-latency Java expertise (concurrency, memory management, I/O, and performance profiling).

- Solid exchange, risk, or matching-engine experience.

- Hands-on experience building automated testing strategies, running performance benchmarks, and diagnosing production issues.

- Excellent technical communication and collaborative problem-solving skills.

- Experience with order entry and market data protocols (e.g. FIX, ITCH).

- Familiarity with low-latency frameworks such as Aeron, Chronicle, or LBM.

- An understanding of replicated state machines, event sourcing, or deterministic systems.

- Exposure to cloud environments (AWS/GCP), containers, Kubernetes, or observability tooling.

YOU WILL:

- Design, build, and optimise low-latency Java services and protocols for an Exchange Accelerator product across the delivery lifecycle.

- Define order, session, instrument, and account models alongside exchange integration boundaries.

- Develop automated testing strategies and perform evidence-based performance benchmarking and profiling.

- Collaborate directly with client teams, SREs, QA, and leadership to ensure exchange readiness and durable production fixes.

- Engage with client engineering and business stakeholders, communicating technical trade-offs clearly.