Charles Cooper, Developer in Seattle, WA, United States

Charles Cooper

Software Developer

Location
Seattle, WA, United States
Toptal Member Since
June 9, 2015

An expert-level engineer, Charles is comfortable in all aspects of back-end development, from web back-ends to database architecture to real-time trading systems development. Described by clients as "truly exceptional" and "one of the best," Charles brings the ability to not only understand client needs, but also the ability to then design and execute solutions for them with precision and excellence.

Charles is available for hire
Hire Charles

Portfolio

Toptal Clients
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Domain-specific Languages (DSLs), SQL, Python, Linux...
Cooper Process Automation, LLC
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bash, Python, Haskell
Chimera Securities, LLC
MySQL, Python, C++

Experience

Linux - 5 yearsC++ - 5 yearsHigh-frequency Trading (HFT) - 5 yearsPython - 4 yearsPostgreSQL - 4 yearsHaskell - 3 yearsFunctional Programming - 3 yearsEthereum - 1 year

Location

Seattle, WA, United States

Availability

Full-time

Preferred Environment

Vim Text Editor, Git, Linux

The most amazing...

...thing I've built from scratch is a high-frequency trading system.

Work Experience

2015 - PRESENT

Freelance Senior Software Engineer

Toptal Clients
  • Personally implemented significant portions of the API back-end for clients' core products.
  • Organized and led a team of five engineers to meet milestones on time.
  • Maintained, optimized, and extended the implementation of proprietary DSLs.
  • Designed and implemented ETL architectures.
  • Implemented a build farm which managed all builds and deployed Git branches in sandbox environments.
  • Successfully optimized the back-end servers to meet performance targets.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Domain-specific Languages (DSLs), SQL, Python, Linux, Haskell
2015 - PRESENT

Founder

Cooper Process Automation, LLC
  • Worked with traders, developers, and managers to streamline workflows and improve outcomes for high-frequency trading strategies.
  • Designed a product that encapsulates our solutions to common workflow problems.
  • Conducted market research for other potential applications of this technology.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bash, Python, Haskell
2013 - 2015

Quant Developer

Chimera Securities, LLC
  • Worked with a non-technical trader to implement new ideas and strategies in C++ with microsecond response time.
  • Created a robust high-frequency trading platform from scratch with 99.5% up-time.
  • Created a tick database and analysis framework in Python.
  • Created a simulation and backtesting environment. The system was profitable from Month 1 with 90% winning days.
Technologies: MySQL, Python, C++

Experience

IdylFin

https://github.com/charles-cooper/idylfin
Java client for Yahoo Finance API.

Beacon - A Decentralized Asset Exchange Protocol

http://beaconexchange.io
Beacon exchange is a peer-to-peer protocol for quotation and exchange of cryptocurrency assets. The Beacon network is decentralized, not rent-seeking, permissionless, robust, fast, impartial, and open source. It removes the requirement for an external matching engine, combining an off-chain network for liquidity discovery with on-chain settlement and arbitration mechanisms.

Contributions to the Vyper Compiler

https://github.com/ethereum/vyper
Past and ongoing contributions to the Vyper language compiler (a safe language targeting the Ethereum Virtual Machine) including bugfixes, spec work and feature implementations (e.g. VIPs 300, 1019, 1020, 1150, 1198).

Low-latency Order Book

https://github.com/charles-cooper/itch-order-book
An order book to keep track of orders and prices, geared for high-frequency trading. It processes each tick in ~63ns. It is able to achieve this speed by using arrays and custom memory pools, skipping malloc and tree/hashtable type structures entirely.

For a more detailed architecture description, please see https://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/3783/what-is-an-efficient-data-structure-to-model-order-book/32482#32482, and the description in the codebase itself.

EC2 Cluster for Distributed Computation

Used Terraform to manage an EC2 cluster internally to distribute financial backtest computations.

Skills

Languages

C++, Haskell, Solidity, Bash, C, Elm, Python, SQL, Java, Domain-specific Languages (DSLs), JavaScript, PHP, OCaml, Perl, D, Scala, R

Paradigms

Functional Programming, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Test-driven Development (TDD), Real-time Systems

Platforms

Linux, Amazon EC2, Ethereum, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Industry Expertise

High-frequency Trading (HFT)

Other

DApps, Cryptocurrency, NixOS

Libraries/APIs

Pandas, React, Node.js, NumPy, D3.js, jQuery

Tools

Vim Text Editor, Git, Terraform

Storage

Redshift, PostgreSQL, MySQL

Frameworks

Django, AngularJS

Education

2009 - 2012

Bachelor of Arts Degree in Mathematics and Linguistics

University of Washington - Seattle, WA