Full Stack Python Engineer

Full Stack Python Engineer

About Varagon

Man Varagon is a specialist middle-market direct lender, focused on creating value-added financing solutions to private equity sponsors and investors in private credit since 2014. The firm’s approach is highly selective, focusing exclusively on direct lending to the core middle market, structuring loans to non-cyclical businesses in the US operating in recession-resilient sectors, typically with an EBITDA of between US$ 10 million and US$ 75 million. As a trusted partner for sponsors, Man Varagon has completed financing for over 330 borrowers.

Varagon’s assets under management were $10.7 billion at 31 March 2024. For more information about Varagon, please visit www.varagon.com.

The Team

We are spinning up a US-based technology team for Man Varagon that will be part of Man’s Alternative Discretionary Technology team. The new team will initially be focusing on integration and automation of deal pipelines, data flows and report generation, leveraging the best tools available from Man’s technology platform. There are large gains to be made quickly in the data and workflow management space which will dovetail into building quant tools to provide high quality underwriting and oversight of our credit portfolios.

Alt Discretionary is a small and agile team that works very closely with the front-office teams in the UK as well as the US for Man’s discretionary strategies that operate in non-traditional markets. We develop and support a number of platforms for underwriting and ongoing management of private market assets like buy-to-rent housing portfolios, real estate debt and credit risk.

Quant technology in private and alternative markets is a rapidly growing space in which Man is demonstrably on the cutting edge so there are opportunities here to make significant contributions in shaping this alongside the investment teams.

The Role

This is an engineer role to be part of the new team in the US, working side-by-side with the portfolio managers and in collaboration with the wider Discretionary tech department in the UK.

We strive to hire only the brightest and best and most highly skilled and passionate technologists.

Essential Skills

• A keen interest and understanding of financial markets and instruments
• A proponent of strong collaborative software engineering techniques and methods: agile development, continuous integration, code review, unit testing, refactoring and related approaches
• Strong knowledge of Python
• Experience building web-app Front end and knowledge of different frameworks
• Experience writing comprehensive unit and end to end automated tests
• Proficient on Linux platforms with knowledge of various scripting languages
• Experience of web-based development and visualisation technology for portraying large and complex data sets and relationships

Advantageous Skills

• Experience of front office quantitative software development e.g. in a hedge fund or investment bank
• Experience in private credit investment

Personal Attributes

• Strong academic record and a degree with high mathematical and computing content e.g. Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering or Physics, or equivalent worked experience
• Craftsman-like approach to building software; takes pride in engineering excellence and instils these values in others
• Demonstrable passion for technology e.g. personal projects, open-source involvement
• Intellectually robust with a keenly analytic approach to problem solving
• Self-organised with the ability to effectively manage time across multiple projects and with competing business demands and priorities
• Strong interpersonal skills; able to establish and maintain a close working relationship with traders, quantitative researchers, and senior business people alike
• Confident communicator; able to argue a point concisely and deal positively with conflicting views
• Team mentoring experience; as a senior engineer you will be able to support and teach junior quants the best practices in software development and financial engineering

Our Technology

The target technology stack is on Linux with the majority of code written in Python, using the full scientific stack like pandas and scikit-learn.

We also have C# integrations with Excel, and several web-based tools using a variety of languages and frameworks like React, Streamlit, FastAPI and Django.

We are heavy users of Man’s own high performance proprietary database ArcticDB, alongside traditional RDBMS’.

Generative AI forms a growing part of our estate as it rapidly evolves and we find more use-cases in automation for our stakeholders.

All our code is deployed using Kubernetes and modern cluster computing frameworks.

Working Here

Man Technology has a small company, no-attitude feel. It is flat structured, open, transparent and collaborative, and you will have plenty of opportunity to grow and have enormous impact on what we do. We are actively engaged with the broader technology community.

• We host and sponsor London’s PyData and Machine Learning Meetups
• We open-source some of our technology. See https://github.com/man-group
• We regularly talk at leading industry conferences, and tweet about relevant technology and how we’re using it. See @manquanttech
• We offer competitive compensation, a generous holiday allowance, various health and other flexible benefits. We are also committed to continuous learning and development via coaching, mentoring, regular conference attendance and sponsoring academic and professional qualifications.

We’re fortunate enough to have a fantastic open-plan office overlooking Times Square, and continually strive to make our environment a great place in which to work. We believe that agile working allows us to deliver the best business outcomes for our clients and investors as well as having a positive impact on work-life balance and the wellbeing of our staff.

We are simultaneously committed to “levelling the playing field” and believe that agile working promotes inclusivity across teams, regions and business units. In general, Technology roles are expected to be in the office for 3 days a week. However, the specifics can vary based on the role, team, and individual circumstances, and are ultimately subject to the manager’s discretion.

Base Salary Range: The anticipated based salary range for this position is $125,000-$150,000 benefits a discretionary bonus. This is the base salary range that the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting based on the location and requirements of the position as well as the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant. The Firm reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time.