Lead Java Developer

Senior Java Developer 💰 £700/day (Inside IR35) 📍 London (3 days pw onsite) 📅 1 year Contract We are looking for experienced Senior Java Low-Latency Developers to design, develop and enhance high-performance electronic trading, exchange connectivity and Direct Market Access (DMA) platforms within a global financial services environment. This is a hands-on development role requiring deep expertise in Core Java, low-latency architecture, multithreading, concurrency, JVM performance optimisation and distributed systems, ideally gained within Capital Markets, Electronic Trading or Investment Banking. Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop high-performance, low-latency trading and trade execution platforms.
• Build and enhance exchange connectivity, order routing and Direct Market Access (DMA) solutions.
• Develop scalable, resilient systems using Core Java (JDK 17+), microservices and distributed architectures.
• Apply multithreading, concurrency, mechanical sympathy and low-latency design patterns.
• Optimise JVM performance, memory management, garbage collection, latency and throughput.
• Develop event-driven and asynchronous processing solutions.
• Diagnose performance bottlenecks using profiling, monitoring, observability and root-cause analysis.
• Develop automated testing frameworks and performance testing strategies for trading workflows.
• Support CI/CD, Agile delivery and secure software development.
• Collaborate with global Product, Engineering, QA and Production Support teams.
• Contribute to technical architecture, engineering standards and mentor developers. Essential Skills
• 10+ years of overall technology experience, including 8+ years within Financial Services.
• Strong hands-on Core Java development, ideally Java 17+.
• Proven experience building low-latency, high-throughput trading systems.
• Experience with electronic trading, order management, exchange connectivity or market connectivity platforms.
• Deep expertise in multithreading, concurrency and asynchronous programming.
• Strong understanding of JVM internals, garbage collection, memory management and JVM tuning.
• Experience with mechanical sympathy and performance optimisation.
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems, microservices and event-driven architecture.
• Experience with automated testing, performance profiling and troubleshooting.
• Strong CI/CD and Agile engineering experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management and technical leadership skills. Desirable Skills
• FIX Protocol and binary exchange protocols.
• Direct Market Access (DMA) and exchange connectivity.
• Electronic Trading / Capital Markets / Investment Banking.
• High-performance messaging, caching and non-blocking processing.
• Latency measurement and throughput optimisation.
• Cloud-native technologies, containers and observability tools.
• GitHub Copilot or similar AI-assisted engineering tools.
• Experience defining architecture and engineering standards. Please apply with your CV and we'll be in touch. Thank you!