Senior Algorithmic Trading Technology Engineer

Job description

**Job Description: Senior Algorithmic Trading Technology Engineer** **Department:** Kotak Institutional Equities Technology **Overview** **Kotak Institutional Equities** is India’s leading institutional brokerage and electronic trading businesses, providing execution, research, algorithmic trading, DMA, and derivatives trading solutions across Indian capital markets. **Role Summary** We are looking for a senior hands-on technology engineer to strengthen KIE’s algorithmic trading, DMA execution, and execution analytics capabilities across Indian cash equities and derivatives markets. The role requires strong software engineering depth, capital markets domain understanding, and the ability to work closely with trading, product, support, infrastructure, and DevOps teams to deliver reliable, scalable, and supportable trading technology. **Key Responsibilities** **Algorithmic Trading Platform** - Design, build, and enhance low-latency algorithmic trading and DMA execution capabilities for Indian cash equities and equity derivatives. - Develop and improve core execution strategies such as VWAP, TWAP, POV/Participation, Arrival Price, and client-specific execution logic. - Optimize execution outcomes using market data, liquidity conditions, order book behavior, volatility, and real-time trading signals. - Convert business and trading requirements into robust, configurable, and auditable platform features. **Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA)** - Develop and improve TCA and execution analytics capabilities for institutional trading workflows. - Build performance attribution across clients, strategies, sectors, traders, and execution benchmarks. - Create dashboards and reports covering slippage, arrival cost, VWAP performance, liquidity, venue quality, and algorithm scorecards. - Translate analytics into actionable insights that improve execution quality and trading desk decision-making. **Quantitative Research** - Research market microstructure, order book behaviour, execution quality, and trading performance. - Develop and validate models using historical and real-time market data. - Evaluate execution strategies through back-testing, simulation, and production performance analysis. **Smart Order Routing & Execution Analytics** - Build routing intelligence using execution quality, fill rates, liquidity, and market impact metrics. - Develop post-trade analytics and feedback loops to improve routing decisions and execution performance. **Engineering & Platform Development** - Build resilient, scalable, and observable services for electronic trading and execution analytics. - Develop APIs, analytics services, data pipelines, and integrations with order management, market data, and reporting platforms. - Implement monitoring, alerting, auditability, performance measurement, and operational controls. - Promote disciplined engineering through code quality, automated testing, CI/CD readiness, secure configuration, and release governance. **Required Skills & Experience** **Domain Expertise** - 7–12 years of experience in Electronic Trading Technology, algorithmic trading, DMA execution, execution analytics, TCA, or systematic trading platforms. - Strong understanding of algorithmic trading, DMA, smart order routing, TCA, market microstructure, cash equities, and equity derivatives. - Good knowledge of institutional trading workflows, order lifecycle, execution benchmarking, risk controls, and exchange/broker connectivity. - Hands-on familiarity with FIX protocol, order routing, order state management, drop copies, and production incident analysis is highly desirable. **Technical Skills** - Must have strong hands-on programming skills in Java, C++, and Python. - Strong production software engineering experience, with the ability to design reliable, performant, and maintainable services. - Experience with time-series data, tick-data platforms, event-driven architectures, or high-volume market data systems is preferred. - Strong SQL and data modelling skills. - Experience with Git, automated testing, CI/CD practices, observability tools, secure configuration, and production release processes. **Quantitative Skills** - Strong foundation in statistics, probability, time-series analysis, machine learning, and optimization techniques. - Experience developing predictive models for execution and market behavior. - Ability to evaluate strategies through statistical analysis, back-testing, simulation, and production performance measurement. **Preferred Qualifications** - Master’s degree in Quantitative Finance, Financial Engineering, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Engineering, or an equivalent quantitative discipline. - CFA, FRM, CQF, NISM, or equivalent certifications are preferred but not mandatory. - Experience working with institutional electronic trading desks. - Experience building production-grade execution or quant platforms. **Expected Outcomes / Success Metrics** - Improved execution quality, algorithm performance, fill rates, slippage, and trading desk productivity. - Better visibility into execution performance across clients, strategies, sectors, and market conditions. - Higher adoption of reliable algorithmic trading, DMA, and execution analytics capabilities. - Stable, observable, secure, and supportable production platforms with strong engineering and release discipline. This is a hands-on engineering role focused on building high-quality trading technology and execution analytics capabilities for institutional markets.