Liora on Production Engineering at Jane Street

SUMMARY

In 30 seconds

Liora, a production engineer in Jane Street's London office since 2019, explains how her team monitors and responds to production issues and alternates support with project work. She discusses communicating across technical and business teams, choosing projects, and learning through ongoing mentorship.

1First response to production issuesProduction engineers monitor systems in real time, respond to problems, triage them, and involve the right people. Their work helps trading run smoothly within the firm's infrastructure.
2Support and project workOn support rotation, Liora fields questions and investigates alerts and logs. Outside it, she works on projects such as shared support tooling or deeper study of a team application.
3Communication across contextsA production engineer works with developers who know the technical details and trading and operations colleagues who understand the business context, gathering and explaining information across both groups.
4Choice and mentorshipLiora says she helps choose projects based on her goals and interests. Mentorship begins with a first-project mentor and continues as engineers grow and mentor others.

Takeaways

Production engineers monitor systems, triage issues, and bring in the people needed to resolve them.
Support rotations involve alerts, logs and questions, while project work can improve tooling or deepen knowledge of an application.
Effective communication bridges developers' technical understanding and traders' and operations colleagues' business context.
Liora describes collaboration, freedom to choose work, and continuing mentorship as important parts of her experience.

TopicsObservability & reliability Careers Company Culture

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The production engineer's role

Liora introduces her work responding to production issues. She contrasts a support rotation with project work aimed at tooling and application knowledge.

I'm Liora, a production engineer in Jane Street's London office. I started in 2019. Production engineers are on the front lines of production issues: we monitor systems in real time, respond to problems, triage them, and bring in the right people to fix them. Across teams, our work helps the firm function smoothly and carry out the trading its infrastructure supports.

When I'm on the support rotation, I'm at my desk answering questions from operations, traders, and other developers. I field emails, investigate alerts, look through logs, and try to fix problems. When I'm not on support, I work on a project instead.

Projects span several areas. One might build general tooling that helps support teams work more efficiently. Another might be a deep dive into an application on my own team, so I understand it better and can provide better support.

Communication and collaboration

Production engineers bridge technical and business perspectives. Liora also describes a culture where colleagues help each other and work together on code and incidents.

Communication is essential in production engineering, especially being able to talk with people who have different context. Developers may know a system's technical details, while colleagues in trading and operations understand its business impact. We bridge that gap, explain what we know, and gather information from both sides so everyone can solve the problem together.

One of the best parts of the culture for me is that people are willing to help. If I have a question about a piece of code, people often stay at Jane Street long enough that I can find the person who wrote it. They'll make time to explain it, creating a comfortable environment in which to grow and learn.

On support I talk to developers, operations, trading, and other support teams, so I get to know many people across the firm. Project work is collaborative too: another developer reviews my code, I may review theirs, and I have someone to brainstorm and design with. That collaboration is usually focused on a smaller group.

Freedom to choose and ongoing mentorship

Liora discusses choosing work that fits her goals and interests. She describes mentorship as a continuing relationship throughout an engineering career.

Something that surprised me was how much freedom I have in what I work on. When I joined, people asked about my goals and what projects I would find interesting. I help decide my projects over the longer term, and day to day I can pick up the item on my stack that seems most important and interesting.

Mentorship is an important part of growing as an engineer. On your first project you have a designated mentor who reviews your code and helps you learn OCaml, best practices, and how engineering works at Jane Street. But mentorship doesn't end after that first project: people continue to think about who can help you learn and meet your goals.

I still work closely with my first mentor, have other mentors review my code, and mentor new team members myself. People are curious and invested in solving problems. When I ask for help, colleagues work with me, and that willingness to collaborate makes it exciting to come to work.