FPGA Developer

The Firm

XTX Markets is a leading algorithmic trading firm which uses state-of-the-art machine learning technology to produce price forecasts for over 50,000 financial instruments across equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities and crypto. It uses those forecasts to trade on exchanges and alternative trading venues, and to offer differentiated liquidity directly to clients worldwide. The firm trades over $250bn a day across 35 countries and has over 250 employees based in London, Singapore, New York, Paris, Bristol, Mumbai, Yerevan and Kajaani.

We leverage the talent of the people who work here, modern computational techniques and state-of-the-art research infrastructure to analyse large data sets across markets quickly and efficiently, to maximize the effectiveness of our proprietary trading algorithms. We are actively seeking new methods and ideas. The models that drive our trading strategies have evolved considerably over the last 10 years, from econometric methods that gave our company its name, to trees, to neural networks, to modern deep learning architectures.

XTX Markets has an unrivalled level of computational resources in the trading industry, with a growing research cluster currently containing over 25,000 GPUs with 650 petabytes of usable storage. Teams across the firm include world-class researchers with backgrounds in pure math, programming, physics, computer science and machine learning. The firm is also constructing a large-scale data centre in Finland to future-proof its significant computational capabilities.

At XTX Markets technology is our business and we are a diverse organization which attracts outstanding talent from across all industry backgrounds. We are focused on teamwork and our people collaborate on all aspects of the business, working openly and with respect for each other, our clients and the market. Our culture is non-hierarchical and one where everyone is valued. We strive for excellence in everything we do.

The Role

Reporting to the CTO, we are building a new FPGA team in London to take ownership of projects previously developed by the ETD (“Exchange Trading Development”) team, enabling ETD to focus more on software development. Initially a two-person team, this group will focus on extending existing platforms and developing new ones to drive additional revenue for the firm. The team will collaborate closely with the London-based ETD and the Bristol-based ASIC development teams.

Our FPGA development approach is pragmatic, using Verilog/SystemVerilog for synthesisable code and leveraging Cocotb and Verilator for verification (we do not utilize UVM). We’ve also started using formal verification tools for small components where full test coverage is difficult to achieve. You will have the opportunity to refine and develop our methodologies while working within our established principles.

You will work on large, algorithmically complex designs that fully utilize high-capacity FPGAs, incorporating high-speed serial interfaces, external memory interfaces, and PCI Express. You will be responsible for planning, optimizing, and implementing FPGA architectures to achieve efficient resource utilization and high throughput while balancing trade-offs among speed, area, and power consumption. Advanced understanding of timing closure, pipelining, and memory/access interfaces will be critical.

We are looking for FPGA engineers with a deep understanding of hardware design principles—those who can take high-level functional requirements and translate them into efficient hardware architectures, with an eye toward what gets physically synthesized. This requires thoughtful structuring of RTL that optimizes for implementation on the FPGA fabric (LUTs, registers, memories, etc.) rather than simply writing behavioural code.
Like all engineering teams at XTX, we prefer small, high-quality teams that have broader remits and more autonomy than comparable teams in industry. This is a rare opportunity to join a new team at XTX and is considered a very impactful role with significant opportunity for ownership. We expect that you will input into the design and delivery of a multi-year roadmap of new projects.

Essential Attributes

• The ability to “think beyond the RTL” to design efficient, resource-conscious circuits.
• Proficiency in Verilog or SystemVerilog.
• An understanding of modern FPGA architectures and their abilities and limitations.
• Knowledge of high-speed serial Interfaces, for example Ethernet, USB 3.1, or Fibre Channel.
• Familiarity with cocotb is preferred.
• Experience working on trading-related application is a plus but is not required.

Benefits

• Onsite gym, sauna, and fitness classes at no charge.
• Extensive medical benefits including an on-site doctor and therapist at no charge.
• Breakfast and lunch provided daily.
• Various supports for caregivers, including emergency dependent care.
• Beautiful Kings Cross office: https://vimeo.com/257888726
• 25 days paid holiday per year + statutory holiday and paid sick days.
• Generous Pension contributions.
• We work 4 days per week in the office, 1 from home unless stated otherwise.