Rust Systems Engineer – Ultra-Low Latency Trading Infrastructure | HFT / Prop Desk | London

An elite high-frequency trading firm is seeking a Rust Systems Engineer to design and build the next generation of their core trading infrastructure. This is one of the most technically demanding engineering roles in London for a specialist who is genuinely expert in Rust, cares deeply about latency at the nanosecond level, and wants to work in an environment where engineering excellence is the competitive advantage.

Why Rust:

This firm made a strategic decision to build critical components in Rust for its unique combination of zero-cost abstractions, memory safety without garbage collection and fearless concurrency. You will be working with engineers who have made that same choice for the same reasons, a team that debates memory layout, cache line alignment and branch prediction.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build ultra-low latency trading system components in Rust: market data handlers, order routers, execution engines

• Design lock-free and wait-free data structures for critical hot paths

• Implement kernel bypass networking integrations (DPDK, AF_XDP, Solarflare) from Rust

• Develop shared memory IPC frameworks for inter-process communication with sub-microsecond latency

• Profile and optimise at the hardware level: CPU cache behaviour, NUMA topology, branch prediction

• Collaborate with C++ and Python teams on FFI interfaces and cross-language interoperability

• Build robust testing frameworks: unit, integration and simulation testing for trading components

Required Experience:

• 3+ years of production Rust development; deep familiarity with unsafe Rust, async runtimes and FFI

• Prior experience in HFT, prop trading, or low-latency systems (C++ background strongly preferred alongside Rust)

• Strong Linux internals knowledge: kernel networking, CPU affinity, memory management

• Understanding of exchange protocols and trading microstructure

• Computer Science, Engineering or Physics degree from a leading university

Desirable:

• Contributions to open-source Rust projects in the systems or finance space

• Experience with FPGA interfacing from software

• C++ expertise as a foundation (most strong Rust engineers at this level have it)