What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Algorithm Developer - PySpark / SQL position at ACA Group?
Senior Algorithm Developer – PySpark / SQL
Company Overview:
ACA Global delivers market abuse surveillance solutions to institutional investors, hedge funds, and asset managers. The Market Abuse Surveillance (MAS) platform monitors trading activity across equities, fixed income, and derivatives to identify potential regulatory and policy violations.
The Opportunity:
This role sits on the Market Abuse Surveillance Product Development team and focuses on validating, optimizing, and advancing a PySpark‑based surveillance platform. Following a multi‑year algorithm migration initiative, the emphasis is now on production quality, performance optimization, and next‑generation algorithm development. The position blends deep PySpark/Python and SQL expertise with financial markets and regulatory domain knowledge.
What You'll Do:
This is a senior, hands‑on algorithm development role ideal for someone who enjoys working at the intersection of big data engineering, Python/Spark optimization, and financial regulatory logic in a production‑critical environment.
Company Overview:
ACA Global delivers market abuse surveillance solutions to institutional investors, hedge funds, and asset managers. The Market Abuse Surveillance (MAS) platform monitors trading activity across equities, fixed income, and derivatives to identify potential regulatory and policy violations.
The Opportunity:
This role sits on the Market Abuse Surveillance Product Development team and focuses on validating, optimizing, and advancing a PySpark‑based surveillance platform. Following a multi‑year algorithm migration initiative, the emphasis is now on production quality, performance optimization, and next‑generation algorithm development. The position blends deep PySpark/Python and SQL expertise with financial markets and regulatory domain knowledge.
What You'll Do:
- Validate and QA migrated surveillance algorithms by reconciling PySpark outputs against legacy SQL baselines across multiple client environments
- Optimize PySpark algorithms and Spark infrastructure to meet processing SLAs across large data volumes
- Enhance and develop new surveillance algorithms aligned to evolving regulatory and client requirements
- Support legacy SQL systems during transition and ensure data integrity and auditability
- 3 years of hands‑on PySpark/Python development in production environments
- Strong Spark expertise (DataFrames, SQL functions, windowing, joins, optimization, execution plans)
- 5 years of advanced SQL experience (CTEs, window functions, performance tuning, stored procedures)
- Experience operating within the Spark ecosystem (EMR, Iceberg, Spark UI)
- Strong AWS experience (S3, EMR, IAM, CloudWatch, cost optimization)
- Familiar with CI/CD, Git workflows, JIRA, automated testing, and code review practices
- Financial instruments: equities, fixed income, and derivatives
- Trade lifecycle and portfolio concepts
- Market abuse and regulatory surveillance (KYC/AML, best execution, fair dealing)
- Institutional trading behavior and surveillance patterns
- 5 years total software development experience, including large‑scale data processing systems
- Proven track record delivering production‑ready data or algorithmic platforms
- Strong validation, testing, and reconciliation experience across complex data systems
- Background in fintech, RegTech, or financial services strongly preferred
- Experience working in agile teams with cross‑functional stakeholders (QA, DevOps, Product)
- Quickly ramp on MAS platform architecture and algorithm logic
- Validate and production‑ready multiple surveillance algorithms with audit‑ready documentation
- Improve algorithm performance and stability across client environments
- Contribute to new algorithm development and next‑generation platform initiatives
- Become a subject matter expert on specific surveillance domains or platform components
This is a senior, hands‑on algorithm development role ideal for someone who enjoys working at the intersection of big data engineering, Python/Spark optimization, and financial regulatory logic in a production‑critical environment.