Senior Python Software Engineer (Front Office - Commodities Trading)

Quick Facts

• Role: Senior Python Software Engineer (Front Office – Commodities Trading)
• Location: Houston, TX (4 days/week in office)
• Contract: 12-month contract
• Rate: $100–$130/hr
• Sponsorship: Not available (must already be authorized to work in the US)

Description

Own end-to-end development and production support of front office trading applications used for real-time trading decisions. You will design and build backend services, event-driven systems and data pipelines, connect to trading and risk systems, and deliver responsive trading UIs. Work with traders, analysts, and quants to gather requirements, prototype quickly, and resolve production issues in a time-critical environment.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain production-grade Python front office applications (backend services, APIs, front-end interfaces)
• Build scalable, event-driven systems and real-time data pipelines using Kafka or RabbitMQ
• Develop cloud-native services on AWS with a focus on performance, reliability, and cost
• Build trading UIs, dashboards, and analytics tools using React and TypeScript
• Design and build RESTful APIs and microservices that connect market data, trade capture, positions, risk, and P&L systems
• Ingest, transform, and model large volumes of market and fundamental data using pandas, NumPy, and SQL
• Integrate quantitative models and analytics into production applications
• Own CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, monitoring, logging, and alerting
• Containerize and deploy with Docker and Kubernetes; manage infrastructure as code with Terraform/CloudFormation/CDK
• Gather requirements with traders and stakeholders, prioritize work, and deliver rapid prototypes
• Troubleshoot and resolve production issues in a time-critical trading environment
• Contribute to architecture decisions, code reviews, and engineering best practices

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience; Python as the primary language
• Experience in commodities or energy trading (power, gas, oil, LNG, or similar), ideally front office
• Strong AWS experience building and deploying cloud-native applications
• Hands-on front-end development with React (TypeScript preferred)
• Messaging/streaming experience (Kafka or RabbitMQ)
• Strong SQL skills with relational databases
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architecture
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Git, and CI/CD tooling
• Understanding of trading workflows: trade capture, positions, risk, P&L, and market data
• Excellent communication skills; comfortable working directly with traders
• Degree in Computer Science/Engineering (or equivalent experience)

Benefits

• 12-month contract with competitive hourly rate ($100–$130/hr)
• Work closely with front office traders and stakeholders on real-time trading systems
• Houston office-based role (4 days/week in office)