Description:
We are seeking an experienced Head of Market Data to lead the acquisition, management, governance, and optimization of market data for both digital and traditional assets across the firm.
This role sits at the intersection of trading, technology, and vendor management, ensuring high-quality, cost-effective, and compliant data services that power trading, research, and risk systems.
You’ll work closely with trading teams, stakeholders, and external partners to deliver critical initiatives that drive our business forward. If you’re a natural problem-solver with a passion for hands-on technical development in a global, fast-paced environment, we want to hear from you.
What You’ll Do
- Market Data Strategy & Architecture
- Define and execute a unified market data strategy across centralized crypto exchanges (CEX), decentralized venues (DEX), and traditional markets
- Design scalable, low-latency data architecture supporting tick-level, order book, and on-chain data
- Evaluate build vs. buy decisions for internal data platforms vs. external providers
- Crypto Market Data & Vendor Management
- Build relationships with crypto exchanges (e.g., Binance, Coinbase, Deribit, OKX), data aggregators, and node providers
- Assist our vendor management team with commercial negotiations, licensing, and exchange agreements across both crypto and traditional markets
- Data Quality, Normalization & Coverage
- Ensure high-quality, normalized datasets across fragmented crypto venues (symbol mapping, schema standardization, latency benchmarking)
- Oversee ingestion of real-time order book data, trades, reference data, funding rates, and on-chain metrics
- Establish monitoring and alerting frameworks for data integrity and completeness
- Cost Management & Optimization
- Manage and optimize the global market data budget across crypto and traditional vendors
- Identify cost-saving opportunities through vendor consolidation, direct exchange connectivity, and internal data solutions
- Implement usage tracking and chargeback models where appropriate
- Infrastructure & Engineering Partnership
- Partner with engineering teams to build and maintain high-performance data pipelines, feed handlers, and distribution systems
- Support hybrid environments (on-prem + cloud) and ensure resilience, redundancy, and scalability
- Enable data access for research, backtesting, and production trading systems
- Regulatory & Compliance Oversight
- Ensure compliance with exchange licensing, redistribution rules, and evolving crypto regulatory frameworks
- Implement entitlement controls, audit trails, and governance policies across all data usage
- Stakeholder Collaboration
- Work closely with trading, quant research, risk, and portfolio management teams to deliver data solutions
- Support onboarding of new exchanges, instruments (perpetuals, options), and strategies
- Act as the firm’s subject matter expert on both crypto and cross-asset market data
- Leadership & Team Development
- Build and lead a high-performing, multidisciplinary team (engineers, analysts and vendor managers)
- Establish best practices for data onboarding, validation, and lifecycle management
- Foster a culture of innovation, automation, and operational excellence
- Embrace and champion the thoughtful adoption of AI to improve team performance and business outcomes.
- Leverage AI tools (e.g., generative AI, automation platforms, data copilots) to improve productivity, decision-making, and output quality in your day-to-day work.
What We’re Looking For
- 10+ years of experience in market data management within a trading firm, hedge fund, or financial institution
- Deep knowledge of market data vendors, exchanges, and licensing models
- Strong understanding of trading workflows, asset classes (equities, futures, options, FX, fixed income), and data types (real-time, reference, historical)
- Proven experience negotiating vendor contracts and managing large budgets
- Experience with low-latency data systems, market data feeds, APIs, and streaming technologies
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to engage both technical and business stakeholders