---
title: 'Machine Learning Performance Engineer (Inference) at Tower Research Capital'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-performance-engineer-inference-tower-research-capital-new-york-6f8f06wshek8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-13'
---

# Machine Learning Performance Engineer (Inference) at Tower Research Capital

- **Company:** Tower Research Capital
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Posted:** 2026-08-11
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-13
- **Apply:** https://www.tower-research.com/open-positions/?gh_jid=8095924

## Job description

Tower Research Capital is a leading quantitative trading firm founded in 1998. Tower has built its business on a high-performance platform and independent trading teams. We have a 25+ year track record of innovation and a reputation for discovering unique market opportunities.

Tower is home to some of the world’s best systematic trading and engineering talent. We empower portfolio managers to build their teams and strategies independently while providing the economies of scale that come from a large, global organization.

Engineers thrive at Tower while developing electronic trading infrastructure at a world class level. Our engineers solve challenging problems in the realms of low-latency programming, FPGA technology, hardware acceleration and machine learning. Our ongoing investment in top engineering talent and technology ensures our platform remains unmatched in terms of functionality, scalability and performance.

At Tower, every employee plays a role in our success. Our Business Support teams are essential to building and maintaining the platform that powers everything we do — combining market access, data, compute, and research infrastructure with risk management, compliance, and a full suite of business services. Our Business Support teams enable our trading and engineering teams to perform at their best.

At Tower, employees will find a stimulating, results-oriented environment where highly intelligent and motivated colleagues inspire each other to reach their greatest potential.

Summary:

As part of Tower Research's Core Engineering team, you will bridge the gap between quantitative research and high-performance production systems, architecting inference pipelines that operate at the physical limits of hardware. Your objective will be to drive the speed, efficiency, and reliability of our ML inference pipelines to their absolute limits, ensuring our predictive models consistently achieve microsecond-level latency.

Responsibilities:

- Benchmarking & Strategy:
- Lead the technical evaluation of diverse inference platforms - ranging across CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs - to guide Tower's infrastructure deployment decisions.
- System Architecture Optimization:
- Analyze and enhance execution across deep memory hierarchies to maximize resource utilization and parallel processing. You will assess and resolve memory subsystem and interconnect bottlenecks across the end-to-end inference lifecycle.
- Infrastructure & Deployment Feasibility:
- Collaborate with Infrastructure teams to understand thermal, power, and operational constraints of hardware platforms to design inference strategies for our latency-critical trading strategies that fit within those envelopes.
- GPU Kernel Development:
- Develop highly optimized kernels and integrate specialized performance libraries to extract maximum computational throughput from the underlying silicon.
- Model Optimization & Deployment:
- Implement advanced model reduction techniques (quantization, pruning, distillation) to ensure compact memory footprints and numerical stability. Prioritize optimization for low-latency, event-level inference workloads to meet real-time trading requirements.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Collaborate closely with ML Researchers, HPC Engineers, FPGA Engineers, and Datacenter Engineers to bring to fruition target deployments.

Qualifications:

- 2+ years of experience optimizing deep learning inference in latency-sensitive or high-throughput production environments, in any domain.
- ML Frameworks: Deep expertise in lower-level ML framework development (PyTorch/JAX), paired with strong Python/C++ skills and a thorough understanding of mixed-precision computation.
- Kernel Development & Optimization Tooling: Proven experience in custom GPU kernel development. Deep familiarity with advanced optimization libraries and compilers (e.g., Triton, TensorRT, ONNX, IREE, HLS4ML, cuBLAS, CUTLASS) as well as profiling tools (e.g., Nsight Systems, Nsight Compute).
- GPU Architecture Mastery: Deep expertise in GPU microarchitecture, encompassing SM execution, warp scheduling, and full memory hierarchy optimization (registers to HBM).
- Cross-Architecture Benchmarking: Proven record of rigorous, data-driven approach to evaluating inference performance across heterogeneous compute architectures.
- Bonus: Practical experience targeting and optimizing inference workloads on specialized hardware ecosystems, including FPGAs and ASICs.
- Prior experience in financial trading is not required.

Anticipated annual base salary range $200,000-$300,000, plus eligible for discretionary bonus.

Tower’s headquarters are in the historic Equitable Building, right in the heart of NYC’s Financial District and our impact is global, with over a dozen offices around the world.

At Tower, we believe work should be both challenging and enjoyable. That is why we foster a culture where smart, driven people thrive – without the egos. Our open concept workplace, casual dress code, and well-stocked kitchens reflect the value we place on a friendly, collaborative environment where everyone is respected, and great ideas win.

Our benefits include:

- Generous paid time off policies
- Savings plans and other financial wellness tools available in each region
- Hybrid working opportunities
- Free breakfast, lunch, and snacks daily
- In-office wellness experiences and reimbursement for select wellness expenses (e.g., gym, personal training and more)
- Company-sponsored sports teams and fitness events (JPM Corporate Challenge, Cycle for Survival, Wall Street Rides FAR and more)
- Volunteer opportunities and charitable giving
- Social events, happy hours, treats, and celebrations throughout the year
- Workshops and continuous learning opportunities

At Tower, you’ll find a collaborative and welcoming culture, a diverse team and a workplace that values both performance and enjoyment. No unnecessary hierarchy. No ego. Just great people doing great work – together.

Tower Research Capital is an equal opportunity employer.

## About Tower Research Capital

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Tower Research Capital is an American quantitative trading firm that builds high-performance technology platforms for systematic trading across all asset classes, markets, and time horizons.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Privately Held)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 1998
- **Founders**: Mark Gorton, Alistair Brown

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Financial Services (Quantitative Trading, High-Frequency Trading, Liquidity Provision)
- **Target customers**: Institutional (the firm trades for its own capital; it provides a platform for systematic portfolio managers and quantitative trading teams)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To create an environment that empowers quantitative trading teams to innovate and reach their greatest potential, powered by a high-performance technology platform [tower-research.com](https://tower-research.com/)

## Products & Services
- **Quantitative Trading Platform**: A proprietary, high-performance technology stack supporting every aspect of trading and research — market access, data management, quantitative research, compute infrastructure, compliance, and risk management.
- **Systematic Portfolio Management**: A platform that allows dozens of independent trading and research teams to build and execute strategies while benefiting from economies of scale.
- **Liquidity Provision**: Market-making and liquidity services across a massive range of asset classes, products, regions, and venues.
- **Tower Ventures**: An investment arm for evaluating business opportunities and supporting new ventures.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of $600.0M (estimated, per LinkedIn data) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tower-research-capital)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: The firm is founder-owned; no external venture investors listed. Key partners include exchanges and trading venues globally.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of 997 employees (+15.3% YoY, +191 people); operates in 21 countries with 11 offices (New York, Chicago, South Charleston, Montreal, London, Amsterdam, Gurgaon, GIFT City, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai); 64 active job postings; 204,460 LinkedIn followers (+20.7% yearly growth) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tower-research-capital)

## Competitive Advantages
- **25+ Year Track Record**: One of the longest-standing quantitative trading firms, with a proven ability to adapt to new market opportunities.
- **Platform-First Model**: Unlike many hedge funds, Tower provides a shared high-performance platform (technology, data, infrastructure, risk management, compliance) that allows independent trading teams to focus purely on alpha generation.
- **Continuous Investment**: Robust, ongoing investment in market access, data, research, compute infrastructure, low-latency technology, and machine learning.
- **Team-Based Structure**: Dozens of independent trading and research teams operate autonomously while benefiting from the firm’s scale, creating an entrepreneurial environment within a stable organization.
- **Cutting-Edge Engineering**: Engineers work on the latest advances in machine learning, wireless telecommunication, hardware acceleration, and low-latency programming.

## Strategic Focus
- **Talent Acquisition**: Continuous investment in top trading, engineering, and business support talent as the firm’s primary growth driver.
- **Technology Leadership**: Building the fastest, most scalable, highest-performing trading technology stack in the industry.
- **Global Expansion**: Operating across 21 countries with a growing presence in key financial hubs (GIFT City, Singapore, etc.).
- **Diversification**: Expanding across asset classes, products, regions, and venues to capture new market opportunities.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Values excellence, teamwork, integrity, respect, and innovation. Described as a stimulating, results-oriented environment that values entrepreneurs and self-starters [tower-research.com](https://tower-research.com/about-us/)
- **Work Style**: Team-based structure with autonomy and independence; cross-functional collaboration encouraged. "Calm and Focus" is a stated value — the firm emphasizes maintaining composure when the unexpected occurs [tower-research.com](https://tower-research.com/careers/)
- **Remote/Hybrid**: "Possibilities for hybrid work" are mentioned as a perk [tower-research.com](https://tower-research.com/careers/)
- **Perks**:
    - Discretionary and team-based bonuses
    - 5 weeks of paid vacation per year
    - Robust medical benefits plans
    - 401(k) with company matching (US employees)
    - Complimentary in-office meals daily
    - Regular social gatherings and events
    - Professional development workshops
    - Donation matching program
- **Engineering Culture**: Engineers work on cutting-edge problems in machine learning, wireless telecom, hardware acceleration, and low-latency programming. The interview process is described as straightforward — "no gotcha questions, random logic problems, or abstract, overly academic discussions" [tower-research.com](https://tower-research.com/careers/)
- **Career Growth**: Commitment to supporting employee growth with professional development workshops and a focus on helping employees reach their full potential.

## Sources
1. [tower-research.com](https://tower-research.com/)
2. [tower-research.com/about-us/](https://tower-research.com/about-us/)
3. [tower-research.com/careers/](https://tower-research.com/careers/)
4. [linkedin.com/company/tower-research-capital](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tower-research-capital)

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