Market data isn't one market. It runs from exchange feeds and tick data, through pricing, reference data and benchmarks, into the analytics, connectivity and infrastructure that move information around financial markets.
Ocean Red recruits the engineering, product and commercial people who build, ship and sell that technology.
Where a business sits in the ecosystem changes who it needs to hire.
Getting raw exchange data in, cleaned up and usable, live and years back. The engineering is about volume, correctness and never dropping a message.
The data institutions value, identify and measure against. Accuracy and governance matter as much as speed, and the people need to understand the instruments behind the records.
Moving market data from the venue or source to the systems and people consuming it, fast and without gaps. Here it is the data path. The same technology on the trading path is a different conversation.
Turning market data into something a client will pay for. These hires sit closest to the customer, and need to know what the customer is actually trying to do with the data.
I've recruited into order-book and tick-data specialists, global exchange and data groups, index and benchmark providers, low-latency market-data technology firms, connectivity businesses and investment-data platforms.
The searches ran from feed handlers and ticker plants through quantitative analytics and product to client integration and sales. That breadth matters, because 'market data' means something different depending on where you sit.
The same three functions as the rest of Ocean Red, with the market-data specifics.
The people who build the feeds, pipelines and platforms, and keep them up when the market is busiest.
The people who decide what the data product is, and get it into clients' hands.
The people who sell data to buyers who know data.
Some projects we are currently working on.
A hands-on DBA hire at Associate Director level, owning a varied database estate behind low-latency, regulated production systems. Mature relational tooling in MySQL and PostgreSQL sits alongside genuinely specialist technology: QuestDB, Dolt, Redis, Elasticsearch. You get autonomy over how the estate is run without being the only person who understands it.
Market microstructure research that actually ships into product. You'll join a specialist product group at one of the largest historical market data businesses in the industry, working across quantitative research, product development and client interaction, with direct access to exchange data environments most quant researchers never see. If you want your analysis to influence what gets built rather than sit in a notebook, this is the role.
Written from the desk, about the people and the data.
200 applicants, maybe one or two real hires. A full pipeline is not a talent pool. Why standard hiring fails in market infrastructure, and what works instead.
Read
Fifteen years in financial data. Knew Bloomberg like his own kitchen. Just made redundant. When the interface becomes natural language, knowing the interface is worth near zero. What's durable instead.
ReadSpecialist market data and trading infrastructure firm · London
The client sells market data and infrastructure services to banks, brokers, trading firms and exchanges, and was scaling that business.
Read the case studyThe hard hires sit at an intersection: technology, data and enough market knowledge to understand what the system is actually doing. That's where I work.
Talk to Richard