Three hires, a live trading deadline, no drop in standard.

The situation

A Models and Quantitative Data team in London was under pressure to expand quickly, and hiring had stalled. Despite the company's reputation in trading technology, three critical quant hires would not close.

They had spent two months searching directly, then a further month with a recruitment firm that kept submitting over-budget or misaligned candidates.

Without the hires they risked missing delivery deadlines, disappointing an existing client and jeopardising a new commercial relationship.

The challenge

The approach

1. 01

   Discovery, role creation and research

   • ·Agreed with the hiring team what the technical bar actually meant here: C++20 fluency and systems performance, not quant theory.
   • ·Went through what the previous three months had produced, and worked out what was reachable at this budget.
   • ·Worked out what to say to candidates who were not coming from hedge funds, given the bonus could not compete.
   • ·Reframed the opportunity around modern systems engineering rather than the alpha chase.
2. 02

   Market mapping and route to market

   • ·Mapped the market and identified 241 quant engineers working in C++20 and above.
   • ·Filtered out hedge fund-only career trajectories.
   • ·Targeted FinTech SaaS vendors, banks and trading technology led teams.
   • ·Delivered a shortlist of 15.
3. 03

   Performance-based hiring

   • ·Re-engineered the interview process to assess engineering rigour and code quality.
   • ·Kept feedback moving between stages so nobody went cold waiting.
   • ·Ran all three offers and the negotiations that came with them.
4. 04

   Onboarding and post-placement

   • ·Stayed with all three hires through onboarding, and debriefed the client and the candidates afterwards.
   • ·Wrote down what to do differently next time the UK office hires quants.

The result

• All three roles filled, under budget and within timeline.
• New UK-based quant capability established from scratch.
• From stalled to fully staffed in six weeks.