Location: Europe / Andorra
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Java, C#, C++, Clojure, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Docker, AWS, gRPC, and a lot more.
Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marekpujdak/
Email: marek [at] mce-tech.ai
Senior software engineer / architect with 20+ years in capital markets technology, focused on exchange connectivity, market data, and high-performance, high-availability distributed systems.
Experience across investment banks, fintechs, and hedge-fund-adjacent startups. Strong debugging and problem-solving skills; extremely detail-oriented. Solid CS fundamentals; recent work includes AI / agentic coding. Claude Certified Architect. AWS Certified Solutions Architect.
Fully remote since 2018 and comfortable working EST hours for US / Canada clients.
Open to roles involving topics such as: trading infrastructure, algo trading, AI, market data, exchange connectivity, distributed systems, latency-sensitive platforms...
Happy to discuss relevant opportunities — email above.
Location: Europe / Andorra
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Java, C#, C++, Clojure, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Docker, AWS, gRPC, and a lot more.
Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marekpujdak/
Email: marek [at] mce-tech.ai
Senior software engineer / architect with 20+ years in capital markets technology, focused on exchange connectivity, market data, and high-performance, high-availability distributed systems.
Experience across investment banks, fintechs, and hedge-fund-adjacent startups. Strong debugging and problem-solving skills; extremely detail-oriented. Solid CS fundamentals; recent work includes AI / agentic coding. AWS Certified Solutions Architect.
Fully remote since 2018 and comfortable working EST hours for US / Canada clients.
Open to roles involving trading infrastructure, market data, exchange connectivity, distributed systems, and latency-sensitive platforms.
Happy to discuss relevant opportunities — email above.
I'd largely question the accuracy of point 1 IN PRACTICE.
Japan is notorious for uncounted and unpaid overtime, vacation days no one takes, and paternal leave you'd better not think of if you don't want to instantly become your division's outcast.
I worked in a host of countries, including the UK and Japan (the latter about a decade ago - I'd be surprised if things had diametrally changed since that time). The actual work hours are not remotely comparable.
(In fact the UK is one of the locales where I worked the least in terms of actual hours. Much less than in France, where they're supposed to be slackers... So generally I call BS on these stats.)
Yes but 2 ends up being a good check on 1 in the higher productivity ends of the knowledge work economy in Japan. I'd disagree a bit in degree to what alephnerd says and additionally think a lot of the actual "zangyou" ("overtime") work that Japanese do today involves drinking with the boss or going on business trips, but think his comment is largely correct. I also think the insistence in Japanese doing on-site work in Japan leads to a lot of inefficiency that Western businesses and governments have largely left behind 10-15 years ago.
I actually find the Western unawareness of how Japan has become an immigrant society, especially in service roles, to be hilarious. It's by far the biggest Japanese social change in the last 20 years probably up there with growing acceptance of LGBT lifestyles and is a massive, divisive political issue in Japan now. Also further goes to show how much idealized othering happens in these discussions.
The average konbini service worker a foreigner interacts with in Tokyo is going to be an immigrant. 12 years ago, I only met a handful of immigrant service workers.
> I also think the insistence in Japanese doing on-site work in Japan leads to a lot of inefficiency that Western businesses and governments have largely left behind 10-15 years ago.
A lot of that is operational as well - historically, the only other country with a large Japanese speaking population was South Korea, but salaries there have largely aligned and the post-1990s generation switched to concentrating on English instead of Japanese fluency. China has started to fill that gap though (hence why Chinese immigrants in Japan are viewed the same way as Indians are in Canada).
Basically, a company that whose entire internal documentation, communication, archive, and processes were always in Japanese will always bias in favor of hiring Japanese fluent employees, most of whom live in Japan and are Japanese.
You see the same thing in European countries as well, but the difference is it's easier for a German or French company to find talent somewhere else that is German or French fluent (eg. Turkiye/Poland or Morocco/Romania/ respectively).
The newer gen companies have a strong English muscle, but those are also the kinds of companies that are happy shifting hiring overwhelmingly to India or ASEAN.
Sorry I don't mean Japanese firms hiring Japanese workers, I understand that's largely due to language fluency. I meant how much in-person work happens in remote branches. So many Japanese shakaijin friends at Japanese companies are taking constant business trips around the country to do things that a video call and an email thread would do in the West. It helps that transportation in Japan is ubiquitous and cheap so it's fairly easy to go on-site, but it still ends up wasting a lot of time and productivity that I don't think Western firms have to deal with.
See, this is the issue. Karoshi/unpaid overtime in white collar work largely ended as a practice in Japan by the 2010s due to legal changes and enforcement via the 2018 labor reforms and a tight labor market.
Yet you see the same tropes peddled ad nauseum. I may as well use the same priors for Poland in 2026 as I would in the 2000s then when it was Europe's punching bag.
Polish-born person living abroad here.
There definitely ARE "mind viruses" in the polish psyche, and pretty nasty ones at that. You might not have noticed them because they are from a different nature than the ones that infected Wester Europe and North American.
For example, Poles by and large harbor an inferiority complex due to the decades of oppression and suppresson that makes them sell themselves short and act as people-pleasers to western nations and western firms (that's precisely what makes us so liked by those firms! and that's also your "looking to America" here). Poles as a nation are driven by romantism, not pragmatism, and that is the reason why we always get screwed on the world stage one way or another and have the reputation of being "dumb".
I am as happy as the next guy to see economic development, but our mental maps let us down regularly, and I am not particularly optimistic for a change on that front.
Why would they want to bear the burden of an "hostile environment" (as the UK Home Office named their policy towards foreigners) AND declining economic prospects due to an economic suicide they had no say in?
Location: Europe (Andorra)
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Java, Clojure, C#, C++, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Docker, AWS
Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marekpujdak/
Email: marek [at] mce-tech.ai
Senior backend/systems engineer with 20+ years in capital markets tech. Focus on exchange connectivity, market data, and high-performance, high-availability distributed systems. Strong debugging/problem-solving; extremely detail-oriented.
Experience across investment banks, fintechs, and hedge-fund-adjacent startups. Solid CS fundamentals; recent work includes AI/agentic coding. AWS Certified Solutions Architect.
Fully remote since 2018; comfortable with EST hours for US/Canada. Open to trading infrastructure, market data, and latency-sensitive systems.
Happy to discuss relevant opportunities — email above.
Senior SWE / consultant working remotely since 2020 here.
Besides all the "control" aspects, the truth is there's been a lot of abuse - a lot of it coming from certain locales. Here in Europe remote roles still exist to a certain extent (though they are a lot more scarce), but it's not uncommon now to see restrictions such as "remote from the EU", "remote from the UK", etc. To sum up: a certain faction has broken the trust of their employer/client, and blown it for everybody else.
TBH I never had issue with that as long as they did their job. I mean, executives do that all the time, right? So everyone can do that. It’s also legal. I don’t complain if my colleagues can do their job. I myself never did that because I prefer more personal time.
Fully remote since 2018 and comfortable working EST hours for US / Canada clients.
Open to roles involving topics such as: trading infrastructure, algo trading, AI, market data, exchange connectivity, distributed systems, latency-sensitive platforms...
Happy to discuss relevant opportunities — email above.