Head of Software Engineering

Head of Risk Engineering | Leading Quantitative Proprietary Trading Firm | New York | Hybrid We are working confidentially with a leading quantitative proprietary trading firm to identify a Head of Risk Engineering — a rare, senior leadership seat for an engineer of exceptional pedigree who has spent their career building and owning risk technology at the highest level. This is not a role that comes to market often, and the firm is uncompromising on the calibre of candidate they will consider. The Opportunity You will own the firm's entire risk engineering function — setting technical direction, leading a high-calibre team of risk engineers, and remaining close enough to the systems to make credible, informed architectural decisions. This is a firm that moves fast, thinks deeply, and holds its technology to an exceptionally high standard. The problems are genuinely hard, the team around you will be among the strongest you have worked with, and the impact of what you build is felt directly across the trading operation. What You'll Be Doing Owning the end-to-end risk engineering function — architecture, delivery, and operational excellence across market, credit, and portfolio risk systems Setting long-term technical direction and engineering standards across the risk technology stack Leading, developing, and recruiting a high-calibre team of risk engineers Partnering directly with quant researchers, portfolio managers, and senior trading leadership as a trusted technical authority Driving the design and evolution of real-time risk systems, PnL infrastructure, and analytics platforms supporting systematic trading strategies Owning engineering decisions around distributed systems, high-performance computing, and low-latency risk calculation frameworks Evaluating and adopting emerging technologies that strengthen the firm's risk technology capability What We Are Looking For 20+ years of progressive engineering experience with a significant portion spent in risk technology at a quantitative hedge fund, proprietary trading firm, or systematic investment manager Proven pedigree — your career should speak for itself, with a track record of building and leading risk engineering functions at firms recognised for technical excellence Deep C# or Java engineering foundations — you have written production-grade systems and understand the fundamentals at a level that commands respect from your engineers Strong distributed systems expertise — CAP theorem trade-offs built and handled in production at scale Concurrency, multithreading, and memory management at a systems level Proven ability to lead senior engineering teams without losing technical credibility Understanding of quantitative trading strategies and systematic risk frameworks sufficient to engage as a genuine thought partner with investment leadership Exceptional communication and stakeholder management — comfortable presenting to C-suite and investment committee level Beneficial Experience building real-time risk systems in a high-frequency or systematic trading environment Familiarity with machine learning applications in risk — model risk, factor risk, or tail risk frameworks Cloud-native risk platform experience at scale — AWS or GCP Experience with high-performance messaging — Aeron, Kafka, or equivalent Location: New York | Hybrid Compensation: Base + Bonus (Advertised is base salary only)