Python Infrastructure Automation Engineer

A systematic trading firm in London is hiring a Lead Python Infrastructure Automation Engineer.

This is a senior developer role within the infrastructure team.

You'll take ownership of their existing Python tooling used to provision and manage a mostly bare-metal Linux estate, extend it independently, and build new automation where manual work still exists.

You need to be a Python developer rather than someone who mainly uses Bash, Ansible or small Python scripts. You should be comfortable taking over an existing codebase, understanding how it has been structured, improving it and making decisions on where it goes next.

Alongside that, you need a good understanding of Linux systems and enough infrastructure knowledge to understand the systems your software is controlling. Previous experience with physical/on-prem servers is advantageous, but not essential.

This is a new position. Infrastructure automation is currently owned by one of their developers alongside wider responsibilities. This hire will take primary ownership of it.

No financial services experience is required.

Responsibilities:

• Own and extend the existing Python-based Linux provisioning platform, improving its structure, testing and maintainability as you go.
• Build new automation for areas including server builds, patching, OS updates and credentials.
• Take manual infrastructure processes and turn them into reliable, repeatable software.
• Move network and firewall configuration into Git, with peer review on changes.
• Improve the build and release process, and automate repeatable Windows machine builds.
• Improve monitoring and alerting so problems are picked up earlier.
• Contribute to their ongoing secrets management work (OpenBao / Vault), and help shape the direction of the automation rather than waiting to be told what to build.

Requirements:

• Strong professional Python development: you've owned a production codebase other people depend on, not just written scripts.
• Comfortable taking over existing Python software, understanding how it's built and deciding where it goes next, as well as writing from scratch.
• Good software engineering fundamentals: structured code, modules, testing and version control.
• Experience developing software for infrastructure automation, provisioning or systems management.
• Good Linux systems knowledge and an understanding of the infrastructure your software interacts with.
• 5+ years across software engineering, infrastructure software, platform engineering, SRE, DevOps or Linux systems engineering.
• Comfortable working with Git and pull requests.
• Senior enough to make your own technical decisions and take ownership of the platform.

Useful experience:

• Networking, including VLANs, routing, firewalls and switches.
• Secrets management using Vault, OpenBao or similar.
• Ansible, Salt, Puppet, Chef or Terraform.
• PXE, Kickstart, Foreman, MAAS or similar provisioning tools.
• Prometheus, Grafana, PRTG or similar monitoring tools.
• Experience developing infrastructure automation software in cloud or virtualised environments.
• Windows automation, Active Directory or image-based builds.
• Experience in environments where uptime and reliability really matter.
• An opinion on how infrastructure automation should be done, for example whether to move towards immutable or image-based OS builds.

Working model:

• Office-based in London, 5 days a week.
• No on-call rota.

Why join:

• Own a production Python platform used across the firm's infrastructure.
• Work in a bare-metal Linux environment.
• Small team with direct access to the code and the people using it.
• Real technical ownership. They want someone who will bring ideas and tell them how things could be done better.
• Opportunity to work in systematic trading without needing previous finance experience.