Senior Software Engineer

About Volfront

Options analytics and intelligence consultancy. We combine decades of derivatives expertise with AI to build tools and solutions for volatility traders. Purpose-built by practitioners, for practitioners.

About The Role

VolFront builds volAI, a conversational AI terminal for professional options traders. Behind the chat interface is a proprietary data layer: vol surfaces, IV-by-delta, realized vol, earnings analytics, dividend forecasts, option prints, OCC volume, fundamentals, and live quotes – all produced by an in-house fleet of data loaders. When a loader fails, traders see stale or missing data. Data freshness and correctness ARE the product – and our proprietary, in-house data is a core competitive moat that is constantly expanding with bespoke datasets you will not find anywhere else.

What You’ll Do

Own (the mandate)

• Be a primary owner of product features: Drive the design, implementation, and optimization of core features powering Volfront’s production trading terminal, ensuring they handle the high speed and data urgency of financial markets.
• Set the standard for application logic: Architect robust code solutions, establish clean API contracts, and build modular, reusable components across the stack (whether your focus leans toward responsive user interfaces or high-performance server logic).
• Interface with the data layer: Write efficient SQL queries and interact cleanly with Volfront's high-scale PostgreSQL data infrastructure (deep database performance tuning and vacuuming are handled; you just need to write smart, performant interactions). Operate (the floor, not the ceiling)
• Guarantee application reliability: Ensure production tools and user-facing features perform seamlessly under market-open pressures and high-volume data streams.
• Direct system maintenance: Collaborate with the team to triage application-level alerts, own root-cause resolution for software bugs, and implement systemic engineering fixes.
• Help eliminate technical debt Improve (the core of a senior seat)
• Harden application resilience: Implement fail-loud discipline. Build robust error handling, comprehensive test suites, and structural logging so that any silent state failures or swallowed exceptions are entirely eliminated.
• Master "AI Control": Use AI coding assistants heavily and strategically. We don't want blind copy-pasters; we expect senior engineers who know how to actively steer and control LLM tools to write cleaner, more secure, and highly optimized code at an accelerated pace. Build (a core part of the seat)
• Design and ship new user workflows: Build bespoke internal tools, intuitive analytical features, and interactive charting capabilities as our product offering expands. Desktop & Containerization Evolution (Nice-to-Have): Package and evolve our browser-based web application into a streamlined, high-performance Electron container to give users a native standalone desktop experience. Coordinate
• Direct the junior data-ops engineer and the interns on pipeline work.
• Interface with the app/LLM engineers on the read side (the application, its tools) so schema and contract changes never break the product. Tech you will own
• Python (all loaders), PostgreSQL on Azure at scale, partitioning, FDW, performance tuning, psql
• Windows Server: Task Scheduler, batch wrappers, PowerShell
• Linux (Ubuntu): systemd services/timers, journald, SSH via jump host
• Go (the live-quote loaders) – read fluently, extend comfortably
• Azure: VMs, networking/firewall, App Service, storage and scaling
• Git/GitHub workflow; CI/CD and IaC (Terraform or equivalent)
• Vendor data APIs: SpiderRock, AlphaVantage, OCC, EDGAR, news feeds
• AI coding tooling is used heavily for development and diagnostics – fluency working alongside it is expected

What You’ll Bring

• 6+ years of experience as a software engineer
• Deep PostgreSQL: partitioning, indexing strategy, query performance on 100M-plus-row tables, FDW, vacuum/bloat and storage health. You diagnose with EXPLAIN ANALYZE, not by guessing.
• Strong Python – you architect loaders, not just patch them.
• Comfortable owning systems on BOTH Windows Server and Linux.
• Pub/sub over polling for anything live (quotes, chains, deltas).
• Monitoring instinct: you believe a job that silently writes zero rows and reports success is a worse bug than a crash, and you build the systems that catch it before a customer does.
• Self-directed senior: small shop, high autonomy, “just do it.” You set the bar; you are not hand-held and you do not wait for process.
• Working-hours overlap with US Central Time, including attentiveness in the pre-market window (roughly 6:00-8:30 AM CT) when overnight failures must be caught and fixed – though as owner your job is to make that window quiet.
• Clear written English (design docs, incident notes, runbooks, change logs). Nice to have
• Market-data or finance feed experience (options, equities, OPRA, SpiderRock) – this is gold and cuts the domain ramp significantly.
• Streaming / real-time ingestion architecture.
• Azure specifically (we are all-in on Azure).
• Experience being the sole or primary owner of a production data platform.
• Mentoring or directing junior engineers. *This job posting exists to fill a vacancy.