Data Operations Engineer

The role: This is a greenfield hire and one of the first of its kind at the firm. You will sit in the Global Data Engineering team in Chicago and own the reliability of the data that traders and researchers depend on every day. Most data teams accept a share of manual operations work as permanent. Here the brief is to automate it away, using AI-driven workflows where they fit. Own data quality, freshness and availability across business-critical datasets, and act as first point of contact for traders, researchers and engineers when something breaks Monitor ingestion pipelines, scheduled workflows and real-time market data feeds, and drive incidents through to resolution with clear updates Onboard new datasets: schema mapping, normalization, historical backfills and metadata Build automated data quality checks, monitoring, anomaly detection and observability tooling Design and build AI-driven workflows that remove recurring operational tasks Build and maintain ETL/ELT pipelines and APIs serving market and reference data to trading and research systems Work directly with external data vendors on upstream issues and specification changes Clear routes onward: leading a local or global team, moving into the wider data platform group, or into production and trading operations Qualifications3 to 10 years as a software engineer, data engineer or SRE in finance; trading firms, exchanges, market data providers and investment banks all qualify Hands-on experience with data ingestion, data quality, monitoring and observability tooling Strong Python, including Pandas, PyArrow and Spark; Go is a plus Experience with Databricks, Delta Lake or Snowflake, plus ETL pipelines and SFTP-based vendor feeds Exposure to real-time or historical market data (equities, ETFs, fixed income or credit) is an advantage A genuine interest in automating operational work, not just running itClear communication with traders, researchers and vendors under pressure Legal authorisation to work in the US; sponsorship is not available CompensationTotal compensation package of $250,000 - $500,000 Dependent on experience, level, and interview performance Pre-Application: Please do not apply if you are looking for a contract or remote work You must be eligible to live and work in the US, without requiring sponsorship Please ensure you meet the required experience section prior to applying Allow 1-5 working days for a response to any job enquiry