Lead Production Engineer

Qube Research & Technologies (QRT) is a global quantitative and systematic investment manager, operating in all liquid asset classes across the world. We are a technology and data driven group implementing a scientific approach to investing. Combining data, research, technology, and trading expertise has shaped our collaborative mindset, which enables us to solve the most complex challenges. QRT’s culture of innovation continuously drives our ambition to deliver high quality returns for our investors. Your future role within QRT The Production Engineering (desk aligned) team is looking out for a senior, hands-on engineer ready to take on team leadership responsibilities while remaining technically engaged in day-to-day production support and development. In this role, you will manage and mentor a small team of Production Engineers, act as the primary escalation point for critical issues, and shape the team's processes, standards, and technical direction while working directly on production systems alongside the team. Key Responsibilities Team Leadership & People Management • Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Production Engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement. • Own staffing needs for the team, including participating in hiring, onboarding, and training of new team members. • Set priorities, allocate workload, and coordinate on-call/shift coverage (including evenings and weekends) to ensure adequate support across trading hours. • Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development conversations with team members. • Act as the primary point of escalation for critical production incidents, ensuring timely communication to senior stakeholders and global teams. • Represent the team in discussions with global engineering, trading, and business stakeholders, and act as a bridge between local team execution and global strategy. • Drive the team's roadmap for automation, tooling, and process improvement in partnership with global leads. Production Support • Act as a first point of contact for the desks, remaining hands-on in providing comprehensive user and system support across all technology streams. • Handle desk BAU requests, liaising closely with Dev teams and Core teams to scope, prioritize, and deliver fixes or enhancements. • Own desk inventory management and infrastructure management for the desks, ensuring systems and inventories are accurate and well maintained. • Monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot production systems to ensure stability and reliability, with particular emphasis on data platforms and processes. • Lead the response to major incidents and urgent requests, including monitoring and triaging, diagnosing and resolving (or directing resolution of) issues affecting data flows, trading applications, and related infrastructure. • Perform and oversee daily health checks and desk-targeted monitoring (dedicated view / Front2Back view / etc.) of trading and data systems before market open, ensuring all components are operational. • Manage and support static and dynamic databases, including troubleshooting data integrity issues and performing routine maintenance. • Coordinate with development and business teams to resolve "pretrade" related issues and implement fixes or enhancements. • Own release management activities for the team, coordinating releases with Dev teams including deployment, verification, and rollback procedures for data and trading applications. • Ensure team documentation is maintained and kept current for operational procedures, incident response, and data workflows. • Ensure team compliance with internal controls, regulatory requirements, and best practices for data management and system support. • Lead root cause analysis and post-incident reviews, driving continuous improvement of data stream reliability and performance. • Collaborate with global support teams to share knowledge, escalate issues, and drive resolution of complex, cross-regional data stream problems. Development & Automation • Set technical direction for and personally contribute to automation tools that streamline operational workflows across the team. • Design, build, and review scripts and applications for data quality checks, monitoring, alerting, and recovery processes. • Drive adoption of best practices in coding, testing, and deployment within the team. • Lead or contribute to projects involving cloud technologies, CI/CD pipelines, and performance optimization. • Evaluate new tools and technologies that could improve team efficiency and system resilience. Required Skills & Experience • 15+ years in a technical support role, ideally within trading/market access, with at least 3-4 years of experience leading or mentoring a team (formally or informally). • Proven ability to manage people and priorities in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment while staying technically hands-on. • Experience with Python, Bash and PowerShell scripting (with or without Copilot). • Experience with Windows desktop/server and Linux OS administration. • Strong relational database skills (SQL Server, Postgres). • Experience supporting trading platforms and infrastructure. • Strong problem-solving, business analytics, and decision-making capabilities under pressure. • Ownership mindset with a strong commitment to issue resolution and team accountability. • Excellent written and oral communication skills, with experience presenting to senior stakeholders. Preferred Attributes • Experience building, growing, or stabilizing a support/engineering team, ideally in a regional office setting. • Motivated to support diverse technology streams and help the team learn new domains. • Ability to work independently and as part of a global team, while being the clear point of accountability locally. • Proactive in identifying opportunities for automation and process improvement, both for self and team. • Comfortable balan