Technical Procurement Specialist - HPC & Datacentre Infrastructure

London, England, United Kingdom3-6 years

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, developers and technologists 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

The technology and market data procurement department are responsible for achieving value for the firm in the execution of a budget in the hundreds of millions of pounds annually.

This role is focused on technology research and IT deployment, supporting large-scale, high-performance environments and trading colocations globally. The successful candidate will work closely with engineering and business stakeholders to identify, evaluate, and implement best-in-class technology solutions.

We are seeking a candidate with a deep understanding of IT infrastructure, systems, and vendor ecosystems, who is comfortable engaging with both technical and commercial stakeholders. A proactive approach to researching emerging technologies and driving deployment initiatives is essential.

Responsibilities

Research, evaluate, negotiate and procure IT hardware, HPC/GPU infrastructure, enterprise software, datacentre and colocation services, cloud services and related professional services.

Support procurement and delivery of high-performance infrastructure projects, including compute, GPU, storage, network, power, cooling, datacentre capacity and exchange connectivity requirements.

Run structured sourcing processes, including RFIs, RFPs, vendor evaluation, commercial negotiation, contract review, purchase approvals and implementation handover.

Work with engineering and infrastructure teams to evaluate technical options, vendor roadmaps, availability, lead times, support models, deployment risks and total cost of ownership.

Manage supplier relationships across OEMs, resellers, datacentre and colocation providers, network carriers, software vendors, cloud providers, market data vendors and professional services firms.

Support technical project management and delivery across datacentre, exchange connectivity, data, network and infrastructure services.

Manage hardware and enterprise software asset lifecycles, including renewals, maintenance, support, utilisation, refresh planning and decommissioning.

Conduct cost reconciliation, spend analysis, budget tracking, vendor reporting and financial data administration.

Improve procurement processes, documentation, governance and stakeholder workflows.

Essential Attributes

Approximately 3 to 6 years of experience in technology procurement, IT infrastructure, technical project delivery, infrastructure sourcing or a related role.

Deep familiarity with HPC/GPU infrastructure, accelerated compute, low-latency systems, collocated trading environments or direct-liquid-cooled infrastructure.

Deep understanding of IT infrastructure, systems architecture, datacentre environments, compute, storage, networking and deployment constraints.

Proven project management experience delivering technical, infrastructure, datacentre, connectivity or enterprise technology projects. You are naturally organised and can manage multiple concurrent initiatives in a fast-moving environment.

Commercially astute, with strong negotiation skills and the ability to assess vendor proposals, commercial models, contractual terms and total cost of ownership. You can balance technical, commercial, logistical, operational and risk considerations when making recommendations.

Effective communicator, capable of translating technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders and commercial constraints for technical stakeholders.