C++ Engineer - Low Latency Systems

C++ Engineer – Low Latency Systems
2-Year Contract | New York City
$275,000–$300,000 per year

Certus Recruitment Group is hiring on behalf of an established client, for a senior C++ Engineer to build and optimize high-performance, low-latency systems processing large volumes of real-time data. This role is for engineers who operate close to the hardware and care deeply about performance, measurement, and efficiency.

The successful candidate will work on latency-sensitive systems where throughput, determinism, and reliability are critical.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain low-latency C++ services handling high message rates
• Optimize systems for latency, throughput, and CPU/memory efficiency
• Develop and tune networking, messaging, and I/O components
• Profile and debug performance issues across application, OS, and network layers
• Partner closely with quantitative, trading, and infrastructure teams
• Produce production-quality code with appropriate testing and documentation
• Participate in code reviews and technical design discussions

Requirements

• Strong experience with modern C++ (C++17/20+)
• Deep understanding of concurrency, synchronization, and memory models
• Proven background in performance-critical or real-time systems
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and low-level optimization
• Solid Linux systems programming experience (sockets, epoll/select, threading, CPU affinity)
• Hands-on experience with profiling and performance analysis tools
• Proficiency with Git and modern build systems (CMake, Ninja)
• Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail

Preferred experience

• Kernel-bypass or user-space networking (DPDK, RDMA, OpenOnload)
• Financial markets, trading systems, or market data platforms
• FIX, ITCH, MDP, or proprietary market data protocols
• Multicast, low-latency networking, and time synchronization (PTP)
• Hardware-aware optimization (NUMA, cache behavior, SIMD, CPU pinning)
• Monitoring and telemetry for high-performance systems
• Scripting for tooling and automation (Python, Bash)

Profile

• Performance-driven and metrics-focused
• Comfortable owning systems end-to-end in production
• Clear communicator across engineering and business stakeholders
• Self-directed and effective in fast-paced environments

Certus Recruitment Group is a well-established and experienced specialist consultancy providing sales, marketing, and IT recruitment services. We serve the technology sector across North America, the UK, Europe, and Australia.