Software Engineer

About Us

Boba Commodities is an established commodities trading firm operating across global markets, with a strong focus on performance and long-term impact, with the wider purpose of investing into a better future for us all. We believe social value and long-term profit are inextricably linked. We carry this philosophy through to the role we play in the commodities markets. As part of this belief, we have ensured we are a carbon negative company, meaning we seek to double offset our carbon footprint, backdated from our inception as a company.

We combine professional trading platforms with in-house developed front-office systems. This allows us to evolve our technology where it creates the most value. From being founded in 2013, we have grown significantly over the past 4-5 years. As we continue to grow, we are investing in our technology platform by scaling our trading infrastructure, improving automation, and increasing the reliability of systems that directly support trading activity.

Our vision

To invest our trading profits into community enhancing businesses across the globe that share our values.

Our values

• We believe in 80/20, the pursuit of non-perfectionism: We ensure we are always focused on the most impactful drivers and results and what achieves the highest value over time spent. We move fast and get things done.
• Adapt & Evolve: We are agile and growth oriented. We won’t get everything right first time, but we are open-minded to learning from mistakes and failures. We adapt and evolve whenever needed, and rely on honest, direct and timely feedback from each other.
• Best Ideas Rise To The Top: We champion the best ideas, not our own ideas. We ensure we listen to other ideas, regardless of the source and embrace cognitive diversity and creating a psychologically safe environment where every voice is heard.
• Care Personally: We care about each other at a personal level as well as ourselves. We put the team’s needs ahead of our own individual needs to support each other as servant leaders. The more we understand each other, the more effective we will be.

These core values are intrinsic in our culture and in everything we do.

How we work

• Small team, low process, high ownership
• We value pragmatism over perfection (80/20 mindset)
• We prioritise impact over activity, we roll up our sleeves and get it done
• We expect people to challenge ideas and contribute to better solutions

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About the Role

As a key member of the team you will be working to deliver the technology vision and contributing to a high performing, ‘well-oiled’ team. Specific examples of your responsibilities are:

• Working closely with the Trading, Finance and Operations teams to shape and make the technology vision a reality and be a force multiplier for our Engineering objectives and strategy.
• Contributing to the development process through writing & reviewing quality code, designing and implementing solutions, innovating, resolving technical challenges and solving business problems with technology solutions.
• Building high value technology solutions for trading teams and automation of manual processes through technology.
• Owning and developing highly effective software development/SDLC processes and practices to reduce lead time to delivery and increase technical excellence.
• Learning fast - in both technical skills and competencies for high performance and innovation.
• Holding yourself and the team accountable for meeting or exceeding the technology objectives.
• Solving complex problems in a logical and pragmatic way.

We need someone who must have the following…

• 0-1 years of industry experience developing production software in Python and SQL, ideally on cloud infrastructure.
• Strong skills/experience in:
• Coding in Python & SQL (including a strong working knowledge of software engineering best practices and processes)
• Familiarity with Relational Databases and core database concepts such as, querying, schemas, and transactions
• Familiarity with version control systems such as GitLab or similar (branching strategies and repo management)
• Experience building or consuming REST APIs, with a basic understanding of HTTP methods, status codes, request/response handling, and JSON.
• Familiarity with automated testing practices and a structured approach to debugging software issues.
• Familiarity with containerised applications and CI/CD pipelines.
• Have a passion for building pragmatic technology solutions that focus on delivering the most value over time.
• Have a solid understanding of working methods such as Agile, Kanban, Scrum and experience of working in teams with these methods.

Ideally will be a bonus if you have the following…

• Integrating software with productivity tools such as Excel, Slack, and others.
• Designing or building low-latency trading systems, comparable infrastructure or related operational/trading processes.
• Modern front-end technologies such as REACT, typescript or next.js
• Integrating applications with databases such as Postgres and MongoDB through code
• AWS services, including but not limited to EC2, Lambda, Aurora, S3
• Data visualization tools and technologies to create effective dashboards and reports
• Have a solid understanding of working methods such as DevOps and CI/CD tools and best practices and experience of working in teams with these methods.
• Container technologies such as Docker and container orchestration platforms such as Amazon ECS or Kubernetes.
• Event-driven and real time data architectures, including stream processing technologies such as Apache Kafka or Amazon Kinesis.
• Monitoring, logging and observability tooling such as DataDog
• Workflow or data orchestration tools such as Apache Airflow
• Strong focus on software quality, maintainability and robust automated testing through quality assurance and quality controls.
• Development and testing practices like Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Test Driven Development (TDD) or continuous performance testing.

You will thrive in the role if you have the following…

• Work without ego, putting the team’s needs ahead of your own.
• Strong self-management such as self-awareness, adaptability, positivity, self-motivation, holding yourself and team to high standards.
• Positive reaction to failure, calm and comfortable in chaos and under pressure while retaining importantly strong ethical standards.
• Personal commitment to excellence; to self-development, personal growth, expanding your comfort zone; strong attention to detail, ability and hunger to learn quickly; all of which is balanced with a strong sense of pragmatism.
• Strong logical reasoning/critical thinking with an ability to make decisions, take a methodical approach, identify patterns to form conclusions and solve problems and ability to hold conflicting views in parallel.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with an ability to liaise with co-workers at all levels of the business. Specifically skilled at presenting complex information in concise and clear ways, applying the appropriate sense of urgency when required.
• Strong team orientation, working collaboratively with high levels of self-motivation and caring personally for the team and co-workers.
• Takes full ownership of work, ensuring accuracy and timely completion while clearly communicating delivery timelines to stakeholders.
• Understands the difference between urgent and important, and the situational differences in approach to delivery or problem solving.
• Effective active listener. Holds space for other’s ideas, avoids listening purely to respond; listens without ego getting in the way.
• Excellent organisational and time keeping skills.
• Able to clearly establish priorities but remain adaptable in a constantly changing environment.

Examples of success in this role include the following…

• Learning and upskilling quickly - both technically and in ways of working.
• Contributing to the team as a ‘well-oiled machine’.
• Delivering and embedding effective testing automation toolsets and practices.
• Strong working relationship with team members and stakeholders, acting as a trusted force multiplier for the technology vision.
• Effectively collaborating across departments.
• Increase innovation rates and deliver on product development.
• Minimise technical debt and technology maintenance work through best engineering practices.
• Build strong trust and psychological safety within team and be a culture carrier for the broader company.
• Own and deliver improvements on business KPIs

Personal Fit

Our values run deep. You can come from any background, but championing our culture is critical. We’re looking for a team member who:

• Shares our vision and embodies the Boba culture as a role model.
• Is looking for an organisation that puts its purpose at the heart of what it does.
• Is hungry to help build the company - a proactive and enthusiastic force to improve our capabilities.
• Loves coding and loves putting technology to use in a pragmatic way.
• Has their finger on the pulse of latest information, ideas, and practices, and can transform these into tangible value for our team.
• Leads by first deeply understanding a problem and then leveraging their skills to work with the teams to find solutions.
• Has a keen interest and understanding in the wider technical landscape, regardless of our current tech stack; is intellectually curious.

What we can offer you

We are growing and adding to how we want to make Boba the best place to work on the planet and are always listening to what our team think we can do to achieve that. On top of a culture of personal growth, caring personally, inclusivity where your ideas are heard and often implemented, we can offer:

• Competitive annual salary plus annual discretionary performance bonus.
• Support from a professionally qualified Coach to help you achieve your personal and professional goals.
• Physical health allowance where we provide an allowance to each employee to use towards a physical activity of their choice (e.g., gym membership, Brazilian ju-jitsu, personal trainer, running club; pretty much anything as long as it gets you moving!)
• 39 days holiday, to be taken whenever you want subject to ensuring we have operational and trading coverage. We do not mandate you work public holidays nor do we mandate you must take them off, instead we recognise that UK bank holidays do not always align to important dates for everyone so give you the choice.
• Pension contribution.
• Income protection scheme and life insurance scheme.
• A book a month for personal development.
• Support to pursue professional certifications/qualifications.
• Fridge full of snacks and drinks (healthy and less-healthy options are available!)
• ‘Bobaversary’ recognition for reaching significant milestones in your career with us.

Other examples of situational/ad-hoc schemes we have run for our employees:

• Surprise and delight – we sent our people gifts from us during mandatory WFH periods, just to show we are thinking about them.
• Boba Social Events such as away weekends or team activities
• Social events & celebratory gifts for achieving team goals.

Why diversity and inclusion is highly important to us

An inclusive and diverse workplace means we highly value differences in race, gender, nationality, culture, sexual orientation, physical ability, cognition, age and background as these differences bring new or different ways of thinking about our work. Therefore, creating a workplace culture that advances belonging and psychological safety brings a mutual respect and acceptance of others and fuels our values of caring personally, adapting and evolving and the best ideas rising to the top.

If you have any questions about the process along the way, just email recruitment@bobacommodities.co.uk.

Good luck and we look forward to meeting you!