Head of Market Data Development & Engineering - Selby Jennings

The Role

We are looking for a senior Head of Market Data Engineering to own how the business builds, sources, governs and optimises market data across crypto and traditional asset classes. The position bridges the trading desk and technology. It is responsible for making sure the data behind trading, research and risk platforms is high quality, compliant, cost-efficient and high-performing.

You will partner with traders, internal stakeholders and external providers to deliver key projects that move the business forward. The role suits a hands-on engineering leader who enjoys solving complex problems in a fast-moving, global setting.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy and Architecture

• Set and deliver a single market data strategy covering centralised and decentralised crypto venues as well as traditional markets
• Architect a scalable, low-latency data platform that handles tick data, order book data and on-chain data
• Lead build vs. buy assessments for in-house platforms vs. third-party providers

Engineering Leadership and Hands-On Delivery

• Manage a small development team while staying actively involved in coding
• Design and build a central Market Data API that sits in front of all data sources, including in-house feed handlers, vendor platforms, kdb+ and Databricks
• Own the firm-wide market data messaging layer used by internal applications

Crypto Data and Vendor Relationships

• Develop relationships with crypto exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, OKX and Deribit, along with data aggregators and node providers
• Support the vendor management function on commercial terms, licensing and exchange agreements for both crypto and traditional markets

Data Quality, Normalisation and Coverage

• Deliver clean, normalised datasets across fragmented crypto venues, including symbol mapping, schema standardisation and latency benchmarking
• Oversee real-time ingestion of order books, trades, reference data, funding rates and on-chain metrics
• Put monitoring and alerting in place to track data accuracy and completeness

Cost Control

• Own and optimise the global market data spend across crypto and traditional vendors
• Find savings through vendor consolidation, direct exchange connectivity and internally built solutions
• Introduce usage tracking and chargeback models where it makes sense

Infrastructure

• Work with infrastructure teams on the connectivity and pipelines needed to bring data into the firm
• Support a hybrid on-premise and cloud environment with strong resilience, redundancy and scalability
• Make data available for research, backtesting and live trading systems

Regulatory and Compliance

• Ensure adherence to exchange licensing, redistribution requirements and developing crypto regulation
• Implement entitlements, audit trails and governance controls across all data consumption

Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner with trading, quant research, risk and portfolio management to deliver data solutions
• Support the onboarding of new venues, products (including perpetuals and options) and strategies
• Be the internal subject matter expert on crypto and cross-asset market data

Team Building and Culture

• Hire and develop a strong engineering team
• Define best practice for onboarding, validating and managing market data through its lifecycle
• Promote innovation, automation and operational excellence
• Encourage practical use of AI across the team, using tools such as generative AI, automation platforms and data copilots to improve productivity, decision-making and quality of output

Requirements

• 10+ years building bespoke real-time market data platforms at a trading firm, hedge fund or financial institution
• Strong knowledge of the main market data vendors, exchanges and licensing models
• Solid understanding of trading workflows across asset classes (equities, futures, options, FX, fixed income) and data types (real-time, reference, historical)
• Experience with low-latency systems, market data feeds, APIs and streaming technologies
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with close attention to detail
• Excellent communication skills, and comfortable working with both technical and business audiences

Nice to Have

• Exposure to on-chain data, blockchain nodes and crypto data providers