Director of Quantitative Trading Job Description Template

The director of quantitative trading leads the systematic trading effort, covering the traders, the strategies in production and the infrastructure they run on. The role is accountable for live performance, operational reliability and the pipeline of new strategies coming through from research. It requires enough technical depth to challenge the work and enough management skill to build a team that can be trusted with capital.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities

• Lead the quantitative trading desk and its people
• Own live strategy performance and the decisions to scale or retire
• Set standards for how strategies are validated before going live
• Oversee execution quality, cost and venue selection
• Manage operational risk across the trading stack
• Prioritize technology investment for the desk
• Work with research leadership on the strategy pipeline
• Represent trading to risk, compliance and senior management
• Hire and develop traders and trading technologists
• Investigate significant losses or incidents and drive corrective action

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative discipline; advanced degree common

Required Skills and Experience

• 8+ years in systematic trading with leadership responsibility
• Track record running production strategies through varied market conditions
• Deep understanding of execution, market microstructure and cost
• Experience setting go live standards and risk controls
• Ability to manage both traders and technical staff
• Sound judgment on capital allocation between strategies
• Strong incident management under pressure
• Credibility with research, risk and senior management

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building a desk from a small base
• Multi asset or global markets exposure