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Trading Engineer - Strategy

IMC Trading · Chicago, IL · Systems & Infrastructure

Posted Sep 30, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 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.

About your past

Tell me about a manual process you automated away. How much time did it save?

What they are checking: Whether they engineer away repetitive work, a key part of this role.

Coming from an SRE or operations background, what do you think will be different about working close to trading?

What they are checking: Whether they understand the pace and stakes of a trading environment.

Tell me about a time you challenged an existing process. What happened?

What they are checking: Initiative to challenge processes and propose creative solutions, as the posting asks.

What would you do

A trading strategy stops sending orders during a busy market. Walk me through how you respond.

What they are checking: Calm, fast incident response on the front lines of live trading.

A trader asks for a quick fix during market hours that you think is risky. What do you do?

What they are checking: Judgment about production risk and clear communication with traders under pressure.

How do you prioritize between fixing incidents and building improvements?

What they are checking: Whether they balance reactive work with continuous improvement.

About the work

How do you find the root cause of an issue in a distributed system where logs are spread across many services?

What they are checking: Skill diving into distributed architectures, which the posting names directly.

What would you monitor to know a trading system is healthy and fast during trading hours?

What they are checking: Their approach to real-time monitoring of both health and performance.

How would you write a postmortem that actually prevents the next incident?

What they are checking: Whether they focus on causes and fixes rather than blame.

What scripting language do you use most, and what's something useful you built with it?

What they are checking: Whether they can actually code the automations and tools this role depends on, not just run scripts.

How do you investigate a slowdown that happens only during certain market events?

What they are checking: Ability to connect market conditions to system behavior when milliseconds matter.

Practice this interview out loud.

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The full job description

As published by IMC Trading.

We’re looking for a hands-on, entrepreneurial Trading Engineer to join our Strategy Development team. This role sits at the heart of IMC’s trading operation, where technology, data, and market strategy meet. You’ll own systems that power our trading strategies, build automations that make us faster and smarter, and keep our trading running smoothly under pressure. This is an ideal opportunity for someone with an SRE or operations engineering background who wants to get closer to the action, where milliseconds matter and creativity drives impact. Your Core Responsibilities:  • Be on the front lines of trading: Monitor system health and performance in real time, respond to market-driven incidents, and ensure our systems stay up and fast during trading hours. Dive deep into distributed architectures to identify root causes and prevent recurrences. • Engineer away the pain: Build tools and automations that eliminate manual processes, scale our reliability, and free time for innovation. • Collaborate across disciplines: Partner with traders, quants, and developers to deliver high-impact improvements to our trading stack. • Continuously improve: Challenge existing processes, propose creative solutions, and drive reliability and performance through engineering excellence. Your Skills & Experience:  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field • 3+ years in site reliability, systems engineering, or technical operations, ideally supporting high-performance or real-time systems • A software-development mindset applied to automating operational problems (Python required) • Hands-on experience managing production Linux and Kubernetes environments • Familiarity with Prometheus, SQL/MongoDB, InfluxDB, Kafka, or similar technologies • A proactive, problem-solving mindset. We are looking for someone who thrives under pressure and enjoys learning new systems quickly • Excellent communication skills and a collaborative spirit #LI-DNP The Base Salary range for the role is included below. Base salary is only one component of total compensation; all full-time, permanent positions are eligible for a discretionary bonus and benefits, including paid leave and insurance. Please visit Benefits - US | IMC Trading for more comprehensive information. Salary Range $175,000 — $225,000 USD About Us IMC is a research-driven trading firm where quantitative modeling, machine learning, and engineering shape how modern markets are traded. A stabilizing force in markets since 1989, we provide liquidity across trading venues, delivering the best outcome in value and risk management to investors. Using our own technology and capital, we build proprietary systems and algorithms that operate across global markets. Our researchers, traders, and engineers work as a collective, combining rapid experimentation, advanced infrastructure, and real-time feedback to turn insight into execution and execution into advantage.  

Apply at IMC Trading