Sam
Deere

Staff Engineer currently building mission-critical trading systems. Track record of scaling reliable, performant, and secure platforms, with a focus on automation and risk management.
Staff Software Engineer | Oxford, England | linkedin.com/in/samdeere

Expertise

High-Performance Systems

Real-time data ingest + processing • Database optimisation and perf tuning • Profiling + observability • Microservices

Financial Systems

Risk management • Order execution systems • Trading support • Analytics • Exchange integration • Financial instruments • Payments/accounting/reconciliations

Technical Leadership

Translating business needs into actionable tech specs • Product management • Internal tooling + DevEx • Policies + Processes • Hiring • Onboarding/mentorship

Work Experience

Lantern Ventures

Jan 2022 - Current
Staff Engineer (promoted from Lead Frontend Engineer)

System Architecture & Performance

  • Architected real-time data ingest system processing 15k+ datapoints/sec
  • Built risk management systems for real-time monitoring (e.g. deltas, collateral) supporting capital-efficient, fully-hedged trading strategies
  • Optimized OLTP + OLAP queries on 15TB+ PostgreSQL database

Trading Support

  • Quick diagnosis and hotfixing for live problems
  • Built frontend UIs with exceptional UX for fast execution and clear monitoring
  • Wrote specialised queries for data analysis and trading research

Technical Leadership & Strategy

  • Close partnership with Trading team, translating business req’s into focused technical deliverables
  • Owned incident response process including root cause analysis, post-mortems, and systemic improvements

Effective Altruism Funds

Oct 2019 - Jan 2022
Head of Technology, Co-Founder
  • Built automation systems that enabled 100% YoY growth while maintaining 2 FTE headcount, processing $20M+ in grants annually
  • Built payment integrations using major payment processors as well as fully-custom cryptocurrency processing implementation
  • Managed product across whole lifecycle (market research, feature planning, shipping, user testing + QA), including CI/CD pipelines, DevOps etc
  • Built sophisticated internal tooling, reporting infrastructure, and business process automations (e.g. grant management system, reporting dashboards)
  • Provided high-touch service to UHNW donors + responsive customer support to all donors

Centre for Effective Altruism

Jul 2016 - Oct 2019
Head Of Technology
  • Built and maintained tech infrastructure supporting six+ internal teams, including donation processing, pledge tracking, event management, hiring and HR, content management etc.
  • Part of co-founder team that took CEA to Y Combinator, the world’s leading startup accelerator
  • Hired and managed team of developers + product manager

Giving What We Can

Feb 2015 - Jul 2016
President and Technical Director, Director of Communications
  • Built accounting automations that reduced donor reconciliation time by 90%
  • Rebuilt and maintained Giving What We Can website and membership tracking system
  • Social media management, community management, fielding media enquiries

Fullstack Website Developer

2004 - Mar 2015
Self Employed

Premier of South Australia

Jul 2013 - Apr 2014
Director of Digital Communications

Govt. of South Australia

Jan 2013 - Jul 2013
Ministerial Adviser (Science/Employment/Information Economy)

Minister of Finance (Aus)

Jun 2011 - Dec 2012
Staffer/Electorate Officer

Skills and Experience

Programming
Haskell TypeScript Python SQL (PostgreSQL) Go (learning)
Infrastructure
AWS Terraform Docker CI/CD pipelines
Data & Messaging
PostgreSQL (15TB+ scale) Redis TimescaleDB RabbitMQ
Fintech
Trading systems Risk management Crypto exchange APIs Financial instruments
Leadership
Team Management Hiring/Onboarding Technical Architecture Incident Response
Process
Test-driven development Strong typing + functional programming Automation and dev tooling Modular monoliths
Other
Very strong written and spoken English Genuinely nice person!

Education

University of Adelaide

2009 - 2011
Bachelor of Arts (Politics / History)

University of Adelaide

2008 - 2008
Diploma of Music (Sound Engineering)

Work Rights

UK and Australian Citizenship