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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Principal Architect, AI & High Performance Systems - **Company:** KX - **Location:** London, UK - **Salary:** £113,154.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, C++ (Programming Language), Cloud Computing, Cloud Engineering, Customer Data Management, Distributed Systems, Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), Python (Programming Language), Regression Testing, Data Streaming, Systems Architecture, System Programming, High Performance Computing, Real Time Systems, AI Platforms, Low Latency, Influxdb, Vertica, Functional Programming, Glasgow Haskell Compiler - **Published:** September 13, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/details/5881143919 ## About the Role * Deep understanding of distributed systems, real-time processing, streaming architectures and system performance: you know why something is slow, not just that it is. * Strong cloud architecture skills and strong Python. * A working understanding of AI and agent-system architecture: model integration, tools, context, and how enterprise data actually gets to a model safely. * Credibility with CTOs, Chief Data and AI Officers, platform leaders and senior engineers. You can hold all four conversations in the same week. Essential Experience * Strong capital-markets experience building front-office systems (trading, pricing, market data, risk or research platforms) in production and under real market conditions. * A track record designing and delivering production AI, data-platform or high-performance computing systems at scale. * Practical experience with GPU or other accelerated-compute technologies. * Experience designing evaluation frameworks for AI systems: agreeing what correct means with domain experts, building golden sets, and measuring accuracy, recall, latency and cost honestly enough to support a deployment decision. * Experience bench-marking workloads and diagnosing performance, scalability and cost. * Experience operating in complex, secure or regulated enterprise environments, and the patience that requires. * Experience with q, kdb+ is highly desirable but not essential. Welcome if you have it; the appetite to become genuinely good at it matters more. * Equivalent evidence counts. Low-level systems programming in C++, Rust or C, and the performance instincts that come with it: memory layout, cache behaviour, lock-free concurrency, kernel-bypass or FPGA work. * Depth in another time-series or tick store (OneTick, ClickHouse, InfluxDB, Arctic or an in-house engine), or in array and functional languages (APL, J, OCaml, Haskell, Scala) where the thinking transfers directly to q. Preferred Qualifications * Cloud Certifications desirable but not essential. ## Description * Assess the environment: run architecture, AI-readiness and workload-performance diagnostics inside the customer's environment, and turn the findings into a defensible design. * Identify accelerated-compute opportunities: assess workloads for GPU and accelerated-compute opportunities, and prove the case with numbers. * Evaluate AI and agent use cases: feasibility, architecture, cost and what it takes to operate them. Saying "not yet, and here's why" is part of the job. * Design across the estate: one coherent system spanning KX technology, AI platforms and the customer's own data, not four loosely-joined ones. * Map the data estate: work alongside the customer's quants, data owners and domain specialists to understand the estate and its ontology, and the opportunities to leverage that data. * Quantify the gains: size the gains in latency, throughput, scalability and cost credibly enough to survive the customer's own engineers. * Define the engagement hypothesis: define the architecture and what each engagement is trying to prove, and how we will know. * Benchmark and prototype: benchmarks and rapid prototypes on real customer data, with results you would publish. * Define the evaluation framework: agree how each AI or agent system will be measured before it is built: golden sets, accuracy and recall, regression tests, and latency and cost benchmarks. Architecture that cannot be evaluated cannot be defended. * Lead through to production: senior technical leadership through the first production outcome, not a slide deck and a handover. * Build reusable assets: reusable diagnostics, reference architectures and accelerators so each engagement starts further forward than the last. * Inform the product roadmap: turn repeated customer requirements into clear inputs for Product and Engineering. ## Related Videos - [Swapping Low Latency Data Storage Under High Load](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/746-swapping-low-latency-data-storage-under-high-load) - [Architecting the Future: Leveraging AI, Cloud, and Data for Business Success](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1096-architecting-the-future-leveraging-ai-cloud-and-data-for-business-success) - [Unleash the power of 5G in your code: transform your apps](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1567-unleash-the-power-of-5g-in-your-code-transform-your-apps) - [Running Secure Life Science Research at Scale using Hybrid GPU HPC and Kubernetes 🧬](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100355-running-secure-life-science-research-at-scale-using-hybrid-gpu-hpc-and-kubernetes) - [Inside Bitpanda's Tech Stack: Scaling a European Fintech Leader - Markus Dorner](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1979-inside-bitpanda-s-tech-stack-scaling-a-european-fintech-leader-markus-dorner) - [C++ in constrained environments](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/441-c-in-constrained-environments) ## Related Articles - [Graph and AI Trends 2026: Why Is AI Running but Not Yet Delivering?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/680-graph-and-ai-trends-2026-why-is-ai-running-but-not-yet-delivering) - [7 Cloud Computing Trends Coming in 2025 for Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/412-7-cloud-computing-trends-coming-in-2025-for-developers) - [How We Built a Worry-Free System That Runs for 10+ Years – And What We’d Do Again](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/751-how-we-built-a-worry-free-system-that-runs-for-10-years-and-what-we-d-do-again) - [Best US AI Conferences for CTOs in 2026: Build vs. Buy, Vendor Evaluation, and Peer Intelligence](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/736-best-us-ai-conferences-for-ctos-in-2026-build-vs-buy-vendor-evaluation-and-peer-intelligence) - [Navigating the AI Shift](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/629-navigating-the-ai-shift) - [Coffee with Developers - Maria Apazoglou - Making AI understandable for all in production](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/475-coffee-with-developers-maria-apazoglou-making-ai-understandable-for-all-in-production)