Tech Lead

Chicago Trading Company (CTC) is a premier proprietary trading firm specializing in options market making. Our collaborative culture fuels innovation in quantitative research, systematic trading strategies, and cutting-edge trading technology. For over three decades CTC has provided critical liquidity across derivatives exchanges worldwide - making them fairer, more transparent, and more efficient.

We strive to be the most innovative firm in the industry today, tomorrow, and long into the future while upholding ethical excellence. We believe that CTC makes a positive impact on the markets, the lives of our employees, and all the communities to which we belong. Started in 1995 by a team of forward-thinking Traders, we are proud to call ourselves an industry leader that keeps making markets and each other better.

At CTC, how fast we turn an idea into running code directly affects how we trade. Developer Experience owns how code gets built and tested at CTC: the build system, source control, CI pipelines, and remote caching and execution. We run it as a product with internal customers, not as infrastructure to keep the lights on. Our users are the engineers, quants and traders building CTC's trading systems, and they notice when we get faster.

Your job is to make building, testing and shipping software at CTC fast, reliable and cheap to run, on one modern stack.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Lead a small team of strong engineers while staying hands-on: set direction, clear obstacles, and help the team's experts do their best work.

Own the developer loop end to end: build graph, remote caching and execution, test policy, and pipeline speed and cost.

Consolidate CTC's codebases on Bazel in a monorepo model, replacing fragmented, per-repo build and CI setups.

Do all of this while live trading systems ship every day, without breaking a release pipeline.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR:

You've led build or CI work for an engineering org of 100+ people, and you're still credible in the details.

You're fluent in C++, Java and Python builds, and deep in Bazel or a similar system (Buck2, Pants) at scale: C++ toolchains, remote execution, cache behavior, and flaky-test policy.

You've consolidated codebases into a monorepo, ideally including migrating a large Java/Gradle or C++ (CMake/Conan) codebase to Bazel.

You measure what you build, and can cite before-and-after numbers for platform work you've led.

You treat developers as customers. Your migrations get adopted because you make it easy to move off the old system, not because you mandate them.

Nice to have: experience in uptime-critical or latency-sensitive domains.

Compensation

The salary range for this role is listed below. This role is also eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. The discretionary bonus will be dependent upon the individual’s skills, experience, qualifications, and firm performance.

Salary Range

$175,000 — $250,000 USD

Most teams at CTC, with the exception of Trading, follow a hybrid workplace model, subject to change based on business need.

OUR BENEFITS

We strongly believe in the well-being of our employees and their families so we offer outstanding benefits to support you both professionally and personally. These benefits include generous time off, insurance coverage, paid parental leave, free breakfast and lunch (plus healthy snacks, of course), wellness reimbursement, and a variety of other benefits focused on providing the best employee experience.

(Disclaimer: interns and contractors are not eligible for benefits at CTC)

OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY and INCLUSION

At CTC, we aim to cultivate a workplace that celebrates diversity and each person feels included, engaged and empowered. Where each of us feels we belong. We are committed to having a diverse workforce and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. CTC does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.

If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or to apply for a position, please contact us at [email protected]. Note that emails sent to this email account for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

Information submitted by job applicants may be subject to review and analysis by automated systems, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), as part of the recruitment process. Such systems are utilized to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of our hiring procedures. Applicants are advised that any information provided may be evaluated by AI tools to ensure an equitable and thorough assessment.