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Software Engineer | Market Data Systems

Jump Trading · Chicago, IL · IT Infrastructure + WCW

Posted Aug 8, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Sep 20, 2026

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Likely interview questions for this role

Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.

Behavioral

Describe a production incident where a market data feed was dropping messages or arriving out of order under load. How did you find the root cause?

experience debugging real-time systems under production pressure and their diagnostic process

Tell me about a design decision you made that traded off some maintainability for raw performance. Looking back, was it the right call?

judgment about when speed matters more than clean code, and honest self-assessment

Tell me about a time you disagreed with another senior engineer on technical direction. How did you resolve it and what was the outcome?

how they handle technical conflict and whether they can set direction without steamrolling collaborators

Describe how you've mentored a junior or mid-level engineer through a hard technical problem. What did you actually do, day to day?

genuine mentoring ability versus a title claim, since this role expects them to raise the bar for others

What does a good code review from you look like when someone submits low-latency C++ or Rust code? Give me an example of feedback you've given.

whether their code review habits actually catch performance and correctness issues, not just style

Tell me about a time you had to support a system in production that you didn't originally build. How did you get up to speed fast enough to fix it under time pressure?

operational ownership and comfort working in unfamiliar, high-stakes codebases

Technical

Walk me through the most performance-critical system you've built. What was the latency budget, and where did the time actually go?

whether the candidate has real hands-on experience in low-latency environments versus theoretical knowledge

Say you're designing a real-time streaming system that has to take tick-to-trade market data from collocated systems and get it to a trader-facing GUI with minimal delay. How would you architect the pipeline from ingestion to rendering?

ability to architect an end-to-end low-latency data pipeline, not just optimize a single component

Tell me about a time you had to choose between a lock-free design and a simpler locking approach. What made you decide the way you did?

depth of understanding of concurrency tradeoffs and whether they default to complexity or justify it

How do you think about memory management differences between C++ and Rust when you're building something latency-sensitive, and when would you reach for one over the other?

real comparative experience across both languages rather than surface familiarity with one

How would you go about tuning a Linux box to squeeze out extra microseconds for a latency-sensitive application?

depth of Linux internals knowledge and hands-on performance tuning experience

Situational

If you noticed multicast packet loss on a feed handler during peak trading volume, what would you check first, and what would you do differently to prevent it going forward?

practical network programming knowledge with TCP/UDP or multicast in a trading context

Imagine you're told a new GUI feature needs a data feed that wasn't part of your original streaming design. How do you evaluate whether to extend the existing pipeline or build something new?

architectural judgment and resistance to either over-engineering or accumulating technical debt

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The full job description

As published by Jump Trading.

Jump Trading Group is committed to world class research. We empower exceptional talents in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science to seek scientific boundaries, push through them, and apply cutting edge research to global financial markets. Our culture is unique. Constant innovation requires fearlessness, creativity, intellectual honesty, and a relentless competitive streak. We believe in winning together and unlocking unique individual talent by incenting collaboration and mutual respect. At Jump, research outcomes drive more than superior risk adjusted returns. We design, develop, and deploy technologies that change our world, fund start-ups across industries, and partner with leading global research organizations and universities to solve problems. Core Development is a global team of technologists who architect, build and maintain our world-class trading platform. From optimizing our core trading engine to building custom hardware, we leverage software & hardware engineering, data science and research, to deliver the infrastructure and tools that drive our trading and business needs. What You'll Do: In this role, you will design, architect, and build high‑performance real‑time streaming systems that power trader‑facing GUI applications. These systems ingest, process, and distribute massive volumes of market data with extremely low latency and high reliability, forming the building blocks for the team to create high‑performance GUIs. You will work closely with trading, infrastructure, and support teams to ensure that real‑time tick‑to‑trade data is delivered accurately and efficiently from collocated trading systems to latency‑sensitive applications. As a senior member of the team, you will help set technical direction, make architectural decisions, and mentor other engineers while continuously raising the bar for performance and maintainability. Skills You'll Need: · 5+ years of professional experience building production software in performance‑critical environments · Strong experience with C++ and Rust in low‑latency, high‑throughput systems · Proven ability to architect and implement real‑time data pipelines and streaming systems · Experience working with distributed, high‑volume data such as market data or equivalent real‑time streaming domains · Strong understanding of concurrency, memory management, and lock‑free or low‑contention designs · Experience building systems for collocated or latency‑sensitive environments · Experience operating, supporting, and debugging systems under real‑time production load · Passion for writing reliable, readable, and testable code, and providing thoughtful code review feedback · Eager to take ownership, guide technical direction, and mentor other engineers Bonus Points: · Involvement in the Rust developer community · Experience with network programming (TCP/UDP, multicast, or similar) · Familiarity with Linux internals and performance tuning  <div class="content-pay-transparency"><div class="pay-input"><div class="description">Benefits <ul> <li style="font-size: 14px;">Discretionary bonus eligibility </li> <li style="font-size: 14px;">Medical, dental, and vision insurance</li> <li style="font-size: 14px;">HSA, FSA, and Dependent Care options</li> <li style="font-size: 14px;">Employer Paid Group Term Life and AD&D Insurance</li> <li style="font-size: 14px;">Voluntary Life & AD&D insurance</li> <li style="font-size: 14px;">Paid vacation plus paid holidays</li> <li style="font-size: 14px;">Retirement plan with employer match</li> <li style="font-size: 14px;">Paid parental leave</li> <li style="font-size: 14px;">Wellness Programs </li> </ul></div><div class="title">Annual Base Salary Range </div><div class="pay-range">$200,000—$250,000 USD</div></div></div>

Apply at Jump Trading

Software Engineer | Market Data Systems

Likely interview questions for this role

Practice this interview out loud.

The full job description

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