{"id":165938,"url":"https://alion.io/job/tower-research-capital-software-engineer-machine-lifecycle","title":"Software Engineer, Machine Lifecycle","company":{"id":58857,"name":"Tower Research Capital","domain":"tower-research.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/tower-research-capital","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":79,"open_postings":32,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.625,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":84,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":null,"employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Ansible","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Configuration Management","optional":false},{"name":"Git","optional":false},{"name":"GitOps","optional":false},{"name":"HPC","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-11T02:22:55Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-11","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T21:06:09Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":66,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":66},"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.\nTower 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. \nEngineers 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.\nAt 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.\nAt Tower, employees will find a stimulating, results-oriented environment where highly intelligent and motivated colleagues inspire each other to reach their greatest potential.\nSummary:\nThis role owns the journey of every machine in our fleet: from the moment a server is racked, cabled, and powered on, to the moment it is fully configured, validated, and available for users. Your mission is to make that journey zero-touch.\nYou will design and build the automation pipeline that takes a machine through discovery, firmware and BIOS configuration, OS installation, configuration management, health validation and burn-in, and finally handoff into production, treating each stage as code that lives in Git, runs through CI/CD, and can be reviewed, tested, and rolled back like any other software.\nThe guiding principle is GitOps for physical infrastructure: the desired state of the fleet is declared in a repository, and automation continuously reconciles reality against it. A new machine shows up as a commit; a decommission is a deletion; drift is detected and corrected by the pipeline, not by a person with a checklist.\nResponsibilities:\nDesign and build the end-to-end machine lifecycle pipeline: from power-on and network boot through OS install, configuration, validation, and production handoff.\nAutomate hardware bring-up via out-of-band management (BMC, Redfish, IPMI): firmware updates, BIOS settings, boot order, and inventory discovery.\nAutomate OS provisioning with network boot (PXE / UEFI HTTP boot) and unattended installation, so no one ever installs a machine by hand.\nWrite and maintain the Ansible and Python that configure machines into their final roles, replacing manual runbooks with reviewed, versioned code.\nApply GitOps and CI/CD principles to the fleet: desired state in Git, changes through merge requests, pipelines that test and apply them, and reconciliation that catches drift.\nBuild automated validation and burn-in: health checks, stress tests, and acceptance criteria a machine must pass before users ever see it.\nModel the lifecycle as a state machine (new, provisioning, validating, in-service, needs-repair, decommissioned) with clear, automated transitions and an auditable history.\nInstrument the pipeline with metrics and logging so we always know where a machine is in its lifecycle, and where the process is slow or failing.\nWork with the HPC and datacenter teams to fold their hard-won operational knowledge into the automation, one stage at a time.\nQualifications:\nA smart, curious engineer who learns fast and is genuinely excited by the challenge of automating physical infrastructure end to end. This matters more to us than any specific line on your resume.\nStrong Python for building automation, tooling, and services, not just scripts.\nHands-on Ansible experience: writing playbooks and roles you would be happy to code-review, not just run.\nA solid grasp of CI/CD principles: pipelines, testing, staged rollouts, and the discipline of driving change through version control.\nAn automation-first, GitOps mindset: you believe infrastructure state belongs in Git, and that any task done by hand twice should be code.\nWorking knowledge of Linux: comfortable with the boot process, system services, and debugging when a machine does not come up the way it should. Depth here is a real plus, but interest and trajectory count.\nSound engineering judgment: you design workflows that fail safely, retry sensibly, and leave an audit trail.\nClear communication and the patience to turn tribal operational knowledge into reliable, documented automation.\nNice to Have:\nExperience with bare-metal provisioning tooling such as MAAS, Tinkerbell, Foreman, Ironic, or a home-grown equivalent.\nFamiliarity with out-of-band management: BMCs, Redfish, IPMI, and vendor variants like iDRAC or iLO.\nExposure to hardware validation and burn-in: stress testing, firmware qualification, or failure prediction at fleet scale.\nExperience with GitOps tooling or declarative infrastructure management in general.\nPrior work in datacenter, HPC, or large-fleet environments where machines number in the hundreds or thousands.\nAnticipated annual base salary range $150,000-$250,000, plus eligible for discretionary bonus.\nTower’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.\n 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.\nOur benefits include:\nGenerous paid time off policies\nSavings plans and other financial wellness tools available in each region\nHybrid working opportunities\nFree breakfast, lunch, and snacks daily\nIn-office wellness experiences and reimbursement for select wellness expenses (e.g., gym, personal training and more)\nCompany-sponsored sports teams and fitness events (JPM Corporate Challenge, Cycle for Survival, Wall Street Rides FAR and more)\nVolunteer opportunities and charitable giving\nSocial events, happy hours, treats, and celebrations throughout the year\nWorkshops and continuous learning opportunities\nAt 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.\nTower Research Capital is an equal opportunity employer.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6988,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Continuous learning","Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Hedge Funds & Alternative Investments"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-11T02:22:55Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 54 · green card filings: 12","filings_12m":54,"filings_prev_12m":27,"green_card_filings_12m":12,"median_offered_wage_usd":147045,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":13}],"liveness":{"score":32,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.537,"p_room":0.6,"age_days":66,"expected_fill_days":84,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:late","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":250000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/tower-research-capital-software-engineer-machine-lifecycle","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/tower-research-capital-software-engineer-machine-lifecycle.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T22:20:38Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":3943,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":58857},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=58857"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ftower-research-capital-software-engineer-machine-lifecycle"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ftower-research-capital-software-engineer-machine-lifecycle"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ftower-research-capital-software-engineer-machine-lifecycle"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/tower-research-capital-software-engineer-machine-lifecycle\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ftower-research-capital-software-engineer-machine-lifecycle"}]}