---
title: 'Performance Engineer at PDT Partners'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/performance-engineer-pdt-partners-new-york-cjraz0n2eycm'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Performance Engineer at PDT Partners

- **Company:** PDT Partners
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Posted:** 2026-04-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/pdtpartners/jobs/7807080

## Job description

Performance Engineer

We’re looking for an exceptional Performance Engineer to join our growing technology organization. Interviewing at PDT is intentionally focused on finding great people who can build long-term, impactful careers with us.

Performance Engineers at PDT are responsible for deeply understanding and optimizing the systems that enable our trading strategies at scale. You will work at the intersection of software, systems, and hardware to analyze performance, drive infrastructure efficiency, and free up critical compute capacity. Your work directly amplifies researcher velocity and scales our core models, creating massive impact through both cost savings and accelerated innovation. You'll thrive at PDT if you love open-ended problems, diving into GPU optimization and system optimization/design, and are excited to take your discoveries all the way to production at scale.

This is a hybrid position and will require the person to work from our New York City office at a minimum of 3 days a week.

## Why join us

PDT Partners has a stellar 30+ year track record and a reputation for excellence. Our goal is to be the best quantitative investment manager in the world, measured by the quality of our products, not their size. PDT’s very high employee-retention rate speaks for itself. Our people are intellectually extraordinary, and our community is close-knit, down-to-earth, and diverse.

## Key Responsibilities

- Analyze and understand end-to-end system performance to enhance researcher throughput and velocity.
- Work across the OS, kernel, networking stack, storage subsystems, memory hierarchy, and CPU layers to optimize compute resource utilization.
- Perform deep-dive analysis using Linux performance tools to identify bottlenecks, latency outliers, and non-scalable patterns.
- Read and understand software layers, from application code through language runtimes, system libraries, and kernel code paths, providing suggestions/PRs that optimize critical paths.
- Free up capacity, reduce costs, and scale models by improving computational efficiency through tuning, configuration, and architectural changes.
- Develop systems to improve performance telemetry and observability
- Conduct proof-of-concept evaluations of new performance technologies (new kernel features, alternative system libraries) and contribute to system design decisions.
- Work collaboratively with development teams to catch performance regressions, review performance-sensitive code, and share optimization learnings across the organization

Below is a list of skills and experiences we think are relevant. Even if you don't think you're a perfect match, we still encourage you to apply because we are committed to developing our people.

- Linux internals expertise: kernel subsystems, scheduling, memory management, virtual memory, cgroups, namespaces, and the networking stack.
- Performance tooling: proficiency with perf, eBPF, Ftrace, strace, sysstat, and related tracing/profiling tools. Ability to develop custom tooling when existing tools fall short.
- Systems-level optimization: Experience tuning system and application performance via sysctls, scheduler policies, NUMA topology awareness, memory allocators, network tunables, and storage I/O configuration.
- Hardware-software interface: Deep understanding of CPU microarchitecture, cache hierarchies, memory subsystems, hardware performance counters, and how software behavior maps to hardware reality.
- Versatile coding ability: Comfortable reading and contributing to code across multiple languages (C, C++, Python, Go, Rust, Java) and navigating unfamiliar codebases quickly.
- Observability and telemetry: Experience building or integrating monitoring and observability infrastructure (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
- Collaborative and communicative: Ability to analyze performance holistically and to effectively communicate findings, trade-offs, and recommendations to development teams and stakeholders.

The salary range for this role is between $195,000 and $225,000. This range is not inclusive of any potential bonus amounts.  Factors that may impact the agreed upon salary within the range for a particular candidate include years of experience, level of education obtained, skill set, and other external factors.

PRIVACY STATEMENT: For information on ways PDT may collect, use, and process your personal information, please see [PDT’s privacy notices](https://pdtpartners.com/legal-notices).

## About PDT Partners

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: PDT Partners is a quantitative asset management firm that uses a rigorous scientific, systematic, and model-driven approach to identify and exploit inefficiencies in global financial markets.
- **Entity Type**: Private (spun out of Morgan Stanley in 2013)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States (with an office in London, UK)
- **Founded**: 1993 (as a proprietary trading group within Morgan Stanley; became independent in 2013)
- **Founders**: Peter Muller (Founder & CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Investment Management / Quantitative Finance
- **Target customers**: Institutional investors (the firm manages assets for external clients, but the business operates as an investment manager)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: While the firm does not publish a single corporate mission statement, its culture page emphasizes “alleviating poverty through education and workforce development” via the PDT Give philanthropy program, and on the careers page it states: “We are a talent-driven organization… raw ability and judgment matter more to us than skills and experience.”

## Products & Services
PDT Partners is a single-product firm at its core — a quantitative investment management platform — but internally it operates through several teams that develop and execute strategies:
- **Quantitative Investment Strategies**: Systematic, model-driven trading across multiple asset classes, built on proprietary research and data science.
- **Technology & Infrastructure**: Cloud engineering, platform engineering, trading infrastructure, and post-trade software that support the firm’s research and execution.
- **Business Operations**: Fund accounting, investor relations, tax, and recruiting functions that enable the firm to run smoothly.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private firm)
- **Key Metric**: Multiple billions of dollars in assets under management (AUM) — exact figure not publicly available
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Spun out of Morgan Stanley after a 19-year track record inside the bank; no external lead investors listed. The firm is owned by its partners.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount: ~177 employees (+6% YoY, +14 people) as of mid-2026; the firm describes itself as “around 200 scientists, engineers, and professionals.”
  - High employee retention is a stated strength; the LinkedIn ratings show a 4.4 overall (4.7 culture, 4.4 compensation, 4.5 work-life balance).
  - Active hiring across Technology, Research, and Business Operations roles (14 open positions as of early July 2026).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Talent density**: The firm explicitly hires for raw ability and judgment over specific credentials, leading to a highly selective, intellectually rigorous team.
- **Long track record**: Founded in 1993 (32+ years) and spun out with a documented 19-year track record – rare in quantitative finance.
- **Aligned incentives**: Compensation is tied to the firm’s long-term investment performance through deferred compensation, encouraging a multi-year perspective.
- **Collaborative culture**: Described as “collaborative” and “kind” by employees, with a growth mindset that encourages learning from mistakes and open feedback.
- **High retention**: The firm prides itself on keeping talent, which preserves institutional knowledge and reinforces culture.

## Strategic Focus
- **Continued investment in quantitative research**: Hiring Applied ML Scientists, Quantitative Researchers, and Research Engineers suggests a focus on pushing the frontier of alpha generation.
- **Scalable infrastructure**: Cloud and platform engineering roles indicate a move toward modern, cloud-native trading infrastructure.
- **Global presence**: Maintaining offices in New York and London to access talent and markets on both sides of the Atlantic.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Rated 4.7 on LinkedIn; described as “collaborative,” “intellectually free,” and with a “growth mindset.” Employees cite kindness and mutual respect.
- **Compensation**: “No fixed or pre-determined upper bounds” – generous, long-term deferred compensation tied to firm performance; LinkedIn confirms a 4.4 compensation rating.
- **Benefits**: Full medical/dental/vision, 401k matching, unlimited sick leave, subsidized fitness, emergency back-up child/elder care, annual conference/seminar attendance, tuition reimbursement, charitable match, and an active philanthropy program (PDT Give).
- **Work environment**: Casual, flexible, stocked pantries, company meals, outings, and ping-pong/poker/trivia. Internally, employees host book clubs, speaker series, and training.
- **Work Model**: Not explicitly hybrid or remote; the careers page emphasizes “our work environment is comfortable, casual, and flexible,” but given the roles (trading infrastructure, research), on-site presence in New York or London is likely expected.
- **Learning**: Internal training, external speakers, annual conferences, tuition reimbursement, and a strong feedback culture.

## Sources
1. [pdtpartners.com](https://pdtpartners.com/)
2. [pdtpartners.com/careers](https://pdtpartners.com/careers)
3. [pdtpartners.com/culture](https://pdtpartners.com/culture)
4. [linkedin.com/company/pdt-partners-llc](https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdt-partners-llc)
5. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/pdtpartners](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/pdtpartners)

## Other roles at PDT Partners

- [Summer 2027 Systems Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/summer-2027-systems-engineering-intern-pdt-partners-new-york-gz0zs432n49f) — New York, NY
- [Summer 2027 Software Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/summer-2027-software-engineering-intern-pdt-partners-new-york-36cmt6tj1ja1) — New York, NY
- [Applied ML Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ml-scientist-pdt-partners-new-york-q8n4cjfeqqw3) — New York, NY
- [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-pdt-partners-london-mvefy9jatada) — London, United Kingdom
- [Quantitative Researcher](https://feeny.ai/job/quantitative-researcher-pdt-partners-new-york-mgqfxb5jsqcx) — New York, NY
- [Research Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/research-engineer-pdt-partners-new-york-vtqw9h5t0szq) — New York, NY
- [Trading Operations Analyst (Asia Market Hours)](https://feeny.ai/job/trading-operations-analyst-asia-market-hours-pdt-partners-new-york-wk8931zva5ja) — New York, NY
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