Systems Engineer
Aquatic Capital Management · On-site
MeritLog read this listing from Aquatic Capital Management's Greenhouse job board and last checked it on September 11, 2026.
Source: the employer's Greenhouse job board. Open the original listing for current details.
Job details
- Work model
- On-site
- Salary
- Not listed by source
- Location
- Chicago
- Occupation
- Computer Systems Engineers/Architects(O*NET 15-1299.08)
Hiring context
How this role compares at Aquatic Capital Management
Aquatic Capital Management has 8 live roles in MeritLog’s catalog across 2 job families, and 4 of them are in engineering. 0 of those listings publish a pay range, a disclosure rate of 0%.
Counted across the job boards MeritLog tracks, at the time this page was served. Pay comparisons use only listings that publish a complete range in the same currency and period.
What the role asks for
What you'd do
- Own and evolve Aquatic's Slurm and Ray cluster infrastructure across on-prem and GCP - supporting research and trading workloads including fitting, tuning, backtesting, feature computation, and market data processing.
- Drive architectural improvements to capacity, scheduling efficiency, and throughput across the full footprint, including GPU computation.
- Design and maintain the connectivity and automation between on-prem and cloud environments
- Evaluate and implement newer compute paradigms as research needs evolve
- Own high-performance storage systems including VAST (NFS and S3-compatible), ensuring data access is fast and reliable across research, trading, and build workloads.
- Investigate and resolve performance bottlenecks at the intersection of storage, network, and compute.
- Design and maintain provisioning systems for complex compute resources and datacenter onboarding.
- Own and improve CI/CD infrastructure (GitHub Actions) as well as the development toolchain for the broader engineering organization.
- Serve as the go-to architect for infrastructure decisions; provide technical direction and help establish vision across the team.
- Pair with and mentor earlier-career Systems & Software Engineers, helping them develop sound instincts and grow their skills.
- Diagnose and resolve the hardest, most obscure system issues that others cannot get to the bottom of.
- 10+ years of experience in systems engineering, infrastructure, or a closely related discipline.
- Deep Unix/Linux expertise across multiple distributions; comfortable at every layer of the stack.
- Strong experience with HPC grid systems (SLURM preferred) in a research or scientific computing environment.
- Experience provisioning and managing bare-metal infrastructure and data centers, not just cloud-native environments.
- Familiarity with high-performance / parallel storage systems (VAST, GPFS, Lustre, or similar).
- Strong scripting and automation fluency (Bash, Python, or similar); able to build tools that others rely on and to contribute to and own production codebases.
- Ability to operate as an independent technical leader: establishing direction, building trusted relationships, and communicating clearly with stakeholders outside the team.
- Experience with distributed compute frameworks such as Ray, Dask, or Spark in a research context.
- Low-level systems programming on Linux using C/C++, with a focus on performance and reliability.
- Experience with GPU computation and instrumenting GPU utilization for ML/research workloads.
- Hands-on experience building and operating cloud infrastructure on GCP (or comparable major cloud), including autoscaling compute clusters.
- Strong networking fundamentals; able to design and troubleshoot complex network topologies including cloud interconnects.
- Background working alongside quantitative researchers or software engineers in a trading, finance, or research-intensive organization.
- You have an architectural mindset: you think about how systems will fail before they do, and you build for stability and operational simplicity.
- You are energized by the intersection of systems and the people who use them. You want researchers and engineers to have great tools, not just working ones.
- You are a patient, generous mentor. You grow the people around you.
- You are direct, give well-reasoned dissenting opinions when you have them, and do not let ideas roll by unchallenged when you see a better path.
Parsed by MeritLog from the employer’s own posting. The full description follows below.
Job description
Aquatic was founded with a shared passion for tackling some of the most complex challenges in one of the world’s most competitive arenas-global financial markets. From the very beginning, we have been driven by a deep commitment to applying cutting-edge scientific research and technological innovation to deliver unparalleled performance. Our journey is one of continuous growth and exploration, marked by a spirit of curiosity and relentless drive for excellence. Aquatic Capital Management is seeking a Systems Engineer to join our team. Systems Engineer Infrastructure & Research Computing Aquatic Capital Management • Chicago, IL • Full-Time About the Role • We are hiring a Systems Engineer to join our Infrastructure team. This is a senior individual contributor role with significant architectural ownership, and real accountability for how our research and trading systems compute. • You will own and evolve the compute infrastructure that powers quantitative research and production trading at Aquatic: our on-premise grid, hybrid cloud compute (GCP and AWS), GPU workloads, storage systems, and the automation that ties it all together. What You Will Do Grid & High-Performance Computing • Own and evolve Aquatic's Slurm and Ray cluster infrastructure across on-prem and GCP - supporting research and trading workloads including fitting, tuning, backtesting, feature computation, and market data processing. • Drive architectural improvements to capacity, scheduling efficiency, and throughput across the full footprint, including GPU computation. • Design and maintain the connectivity and automation between on-prem and cloud environments • Evaluate and implement newer compute paradigms as research needs evolve Storage & Performance • Own high-performance storage systems including VAST (NFS and S3-compatible), ensuring data access is fast and reliable across research, trading, and build workloads. • Investigate and resolve performance bottlenecks at the intersection of storage, network, and compute. Developer Experience & Automation • Design and maintain provisioning systems for complex compute resources and datacenter onboarding. • Own and improve CI/CD infrastructure (GitHub Actions) as well as the development toolchain for the broader engineering organization. Technical Leadership & Mentorship • Serve as the go-to architect for infrastructure decisions; provide technical direction and help establish vision across the team. • Pair with and mentor earlier-career Systems & Software Engineers, helping them develop sound instincts and grow their skills. • Diagnose and resolve the hardest, most obscure system issues that others cannot get to the bottom of. What We Are Looking For Required • 10+ years of experience in systems engineering, infrastructure, or a closely related discipline. • Deep Unix/Linux expertise across multiple distributions; comfortable at every layer of the stack. • Strong experience with HPC grid systems (SLURM preferred) in a research or scientific computing environment. • Experience provisioning and managing bare-metal infrastructure and data centers, not just cloud-native environments. • Familiarity with high-performance / parallel storage systems (VAST, GPFS, Lustre, or similar). • Strong scripting and automation fluency (Bash, Python, or similar); able to build tools that others rely on and to contribute to and own production codebases. • Ability to operate as an independent technical leader: establishing direction, building trusted relationships, and communicating clearly with stakeholders outside the team. Strongly Preferred • Experience with distributed compute frameworks such as Ray, Dask, or Spark in a research context. • Low-level systems programming on Linux using C/C++, with a focus on performance and reliability. • Experience with GPU computation and instrumenting GPU utilization for ML/research workloads. • Hands-on experience building and operating cloud infrastructure on GCP (or comparable major cloud), including autoscaling compute clusters. • Strong networking fundamentals; able to design and troubleshoot complex network topologies including cloud interconnects. • Background working alongside quantitative researchers or software engineers in a trading, finance, or research-intensive organization. What Makes You Stand Out • You have an architectural mindset: you think about how systems will fail before they do, and you build for stability and operational simplicity. • You are energized by the intersection of systems and the people who use them. You want researchers and engineers to have great tools, not just working ones. • You are a patient, generous mentor. You grow the people around you. • You are direct, give well-reasoned dissenting opinions when you have them, and do not let ideas roll by unchallenged when you see a better path. The base salary for this role is anticipated to be between $150,000 and $300,000, which is based on information at the time of posting. This position may also be eligible for additional forms of compensation, such as a discretionary bonus, and benefits. Discretionary bonus can be a significant portion of total compensation. Actual compensation for successful candidates will be carefully determined based on a number of factors, including their unique skills, qualifications and relevant experience. Benefits: • Benefits: For full-time employees, fully paid medical, dental, and vision for employees and dependents, competitive 401k plan, employer-paid life & disability insurance • Perks: Wellness programs, casual dress, snacks, lunch, game room, team and company events • Development: Open environment to maximize learning and knowledge sharing • Time: Generous PTO, paid holidays, competitive paid caregiver leaves Aquatic Capital This role represents a unique opportunity to join a quantitative investment manager in its early stage of growth. The firm’s culture will be shaped by collaboration, meritocracy, ambition, and calm determination. Aquatic is a proud equal opportunity workplace. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics.
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