Team Lead - Windows Engineer

At Mako, we believe in the power of collaboration to drive innovation in pursuit of our collective ambition; excellence in trading. Our diverse community is connected through a commitment to being the best we can be with the highest standards of integrity.

We are seeking an experienced Team Lead – Windows Engineer to own and drive our hybrid on-premises Active Directory and Azure Microsoft estate, serving as the technical leader to the global Windows platform engineering team. The team is distributed across London, Sydney, and a remote office. Your remit is to set and drive the global technical strategy, standards, and delivery for the Windows estate — ensuring consistency, quality, and reliability across all regions. This is a hands-on player-coach role: you will be deeply involved in technical delivery alongside your leadership responsibilities.

What you’ll be involved in:

• Own technical excellence across the firm’s global Windows platform engineering function, defining and driving the technical strategy, standards, and roadmap.
• Line-manage direct reports, including one-to-ones, performance reviews, objectives, and career development.
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and guidance to the wider team, setting engineering standards and ensuring consistent delivery across all regions.
• Perform significant hands-on engineering work as a senior individual contributor, particularly for London-centric infrastructure and globally impactful projects.
• Own the design, build, and operational support of the firm’s hybrid Windows estate, including Active Directory, Azure AD (Entra ID), Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, DFS, PKI, Microsoft Exchange, and hosted Exchange Online / Outlook.
• Manage and optimise the firm’s desktop environments supporting front-office trading desks globally, including build engineering, image management, and desktop performance.
• Drive automation and infrastructure-as-code adoption using PowerShell, DSC, Ansible, or Terraform to maximise the output of a lean, distributed team.
• Establish and maintain effective asynchronous working practices, clear handoff procedures, and documentation standards to support follow-the-sun operations.
• Collaborate with network, Linux, and application teams to deliver resilient, low-latency infrastructure for trading systems.
• Oversee patching, hardening, and vulnerability remediation globally, in line with the firm’s security policies and regulatory requirements (FCA, PRA).
• Oversee and manage backup and recovery solutions, using tools such as Veeam, Netbackup, or Veritas.
• Manage and support security solutions, including endpoint protection and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) platforms such as Netskope and Microsoft Defender.
• Manage relationships with key vendors including Microsoft and endpoint management providers.
• Contribute to capacity planning, disaster recovery testing, and infrastructure roadmap development.
• Coordinate an on-call rota across regions to provide follow-the-sun support for critical trading infrastructure.
• Produce and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and architectural diagrams to support distributed team operations.

What we need from you:

• Significant experience (typically 8+ years) in enterprise Windows engineering, with at least 2 years in a team lead or senior technical leadership capacity.
• Deep technical knowledge and hands-on experience managing a hybrid on-premises Active Directory and Azure AD (Entra ID) environment, including Azure AD Connect, conditional access, and identity federation.
• Proven experience setting technical direction and engineering standards across geographically distributed teams, including working effectively with colleagues in APAC time zones.
• Expert-level knowledge of Active Directory, Azure AD (Entra ID), Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, DFS, Windows Server 2019/2022, Microsoft Exchange (on-premises and Exchange Online), and certificate services.
• Strong experience with virtualisation platforms (VMware, Hyper-V).
• Hands-on experience with hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), specifically Nutanix or Linux KVM equivalents in a multi-node cluster deployment, administration, and lifecycle management.
• Demonstrated ability in scripting and automation (PowerShell required; Ansible, Terraform, or DSC desirable).
• Comfortable operating as a player-coach: able to deliver hands-on technical work while setting team priorities and managing stakeholder expectations.
• Experience operating in a regulated financial services environment, ideally within a trading firm, hedge fund, or investment bank.
• Solid understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, VLANs, load balancing) as they relate to Windows infrastructure, including ownership and maintenance of Windows DHCP services across global sites.

We are Mako

At Mako, we are welcoming, inclusive and collaborative. We work fast and smart in a supportive and dress-down environment that allows colleagues to be themselves and achieve great things. We uphold the principles of a flat structure that offers unrivalled engagement with senior leadership and career development opportunities. We have a comprehensive benefits package, including:

• Flexible leave and hybrid working policies
• Private health and dental insurance
• Generous pension scheme
• Free access to the Mako gym
• Employee wellbeing guidance and support
• Opportunity to become involved in the rewarding work of the Mako Foundation

About Mako

Mako is a leading options market maker with a global trading footprint. It has been at the forefront of options market making since 1999, from the open outcry trading pits to screen trading and automated algorithmic execution strategies that are driving the future of the industry.

From offices in London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Singapore, Sydney, Brisbane and Chengdu, Mako offers the best-in-class liquidity solutions across Equities, Fixed Income, Commodities and FX derivatives markets and prides itself in its entrepreneurial, collaborative and philanthropic culture.

If you require any reasonable adjustments or assistance during the recruitment process, please email hr@mako.com and we will arrange this.

For further information on the Mako Group please refer to our website: www.mako.com.

Mako does not accept unsolicited CVs or candidate details from recruiters or search firms and will not pay any fees to such firms without a signed agreement.