Software Systems Engineer Jobs in Illinois

DRW is a diversified trading firm with over 3 decades of experience bringing sophisticated technology and exceptional people together to operate in markets around the world. We value autonomy and the ability to quickly pivot to capture opportunities, so we operate using our own capital and trading at our own risk.

Headquartered in Chicago with offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, we trade a variety of asset classes including Fixed Income, ETFs, Equities, FX, Commodities and Energy across all major global markets. We have also leveraged our expertise and technology to expand into three non-traditional strategies: real estate, venture capital and cryptoassets.

We operate with respect, curiosity and open minds. The people who thrive here share our belief that it's not just what we do that matters–it's how we do it. DRW is a place of high expectations, integrity, innovation and a willingness to challenge consensus.

As a Systems Software Engineer on our Network Capture Services team, you will help build and operate the firm's network packet capture platform. The data our capture systems produce is relied on daily by trading, research, and support teams, and they treat it as mission critical. You will work alongside experienced software and systems engineers who share operational responsibility for everything we ship.

This role is broader than a typical systems software engineering role. You will write software (C++, Python, Rust, Ruby), and you will also spend a significant share of your time on systems and infrastructure work: specifying, building, and deploying capture servers, automating that process with Ansible, and coordinating with our data center, systems administration, network engineering, and purchasing teams to get it done. You will take a regular turn on the team's weekly production support rotation, and there is steady feature development work alongside it. If you want a role with real breadth, genuine ownership of what you deploy, and you like to be challenged, this is for you. This role is based in our Chicago headquarters.

What you'll be working on

• Designing, building, deploying, and validating network capture servers, and driving that work to completion across every team involved
• Developing and maintaining our capture and query software (C++, Python, Rust, Ruby) with a constant focus on testing, reliability, and performance
• Building the Ansible automation, configuration management, and deployment tooling that makes capture server provisioning repeatable rather than manual
• Taking a regular turn on the team's weekly production support rotation: troubleshooting live capture issues, coordinating incident response, and monitoring proactively to catch problems before our users do
• Improving automation, monitoring, and capacity planning, and seeing your own proposals through to production
• Onboarding new capture deployments in partnership with the stakeholder teams that depend on them
• Serving as a liaison between Network Capture Services and the infrastructure teams we work with

You will be right at home if you have

• 3+ years of professional systems software engineering experience, strong skills in a systems language such as Rust, C/C++, or Go, and a genuine willingness to make C++ your primary language. Ruby and Rust experience are both a plus.
• Experience with DPDK or comparable kernel-bypass packet processing, including the concepts that come with it — hugepages, CPU pinning and core isolation, NUMA awareness, poll-mode drivers
• Strong Linux skills, including administration and troubleshooting of production servers. RHEL-family experience is a plus, as is a background as a Linux administrator or network engineer.
• Solid networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, routing, switching, NICs, packet analysis
• Hands-on experience with server hardware and data center workflows — specifying and validating builds, working through remote hands, rack and cabling coordination, firmware and BIOS, out-of-band management
• Experience with Ansible or a comparable configuration management tool
• Comfort and effectiveness coordinating work across infrastructure teams you do not sit on, and patience for the follow-through that requires
• Experience with Git, CI/CD pipelines, and package management. Kubernetes and GitOps tooling such as Flux or Helm are a plus.
• Strong scripting skills in Bash, Python, Ruby, or similar
• A habit of working on systems with a constant focus on testing, reliability, scalability, and maintainability
• Experience with commercial network capture products is a plus, as is performance analysis tooling experience (perf, eBPF, flamegraphs, tcpdump) and contributions to the DPDK ecosystem beyond application-level use
• Familiarity with service discovery, secrets management, metrics and dashboarding, and relational databases
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Availability for the weekly production support rotation, which includes some off-hours, nights, and weekends; composure in occasional high-pressure situations; and a strong sense of urgency in support of our internal clients

The annual base salary range for this position is $145,000 to $185,000 depending on the candidate's experience, qualifications, and relevant skill set. The position is also eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. In addition, DRW offers a comprehensive suite of employee benefits including group medical, pharmacy, dental and vision insurance, 401k (with discretionary employer match), short and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance, health savings accounts, and flexible spending accounts.

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California residents, please review the California Privacy Notice for information about certain legal rights at https://drw.com/california-privacy-notice.

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