Head of Risk - Digital Assets Trading (UK/EU Remote) in London

We are a well-known institutional digital assets organisation, hiring for the newly created role of Head of Risk. We are open to high performing Quantitative Risk Managers from traditional finance, looking for their first role in the digital assets space.

We are seeking to appoint a new Head of Risk to own and develop the internal risk function, end-to-end. This is a senior leadership role with direct accountability for the design, implementation and enforcement of a firm-wide risk framework across all activities.

The role requires strong quantitative risk expertise and the ability to apply rigorous methodologies to complex, real-time markets across both traditional finance and digital assets. The successful candidate will co-design the risk architecture alongside senior leadership, covering data, analytics and real-time risk aggregation.

You will have full oversight of risk across trading, including exposures across CeFi and DeFi environments. This includes defining risk appetite, implementing advanced risk metrics and ensuring disciplined risk-taking across the organization.

We are looking for a leader who sets the standard, challenges the business and enforces a strong risk culture, while enabling the firm to scale.

• Quantitative Risk Framework: Develop and maintain a quantitative risk framework grounded in modern risk theory (e.g. market, credit, liquidity and systemic risk modelling), leveraging concepts such as tail risk, extreme value theory, dependence structures and stress testing.
• Firm-wide Risk System Architecture: Co-design and implement the firm-wide risk management system in close collaboration with senior technology and operations leadership, including data architecture, risk aggregation layers, real-time monitoring capabilities and reporting infrastructure across all business lines.
• Cross-Asset & Cross-Infrastructure Risk Integration: Build an integrated risk view across centralized and decentralized venues, covering exchange risk, counterparty risk, smart contract risk, collateral efficiency and liquidity fragmentation.
• Advanced Risk Modelling & Metrics: Define and implement advanced risk metrics (VaR, Expected Shortfall, stress scenarios, liquidity-adjusted risk, concentration risk) and ensure their consistent application across trading, treasury and investment activities.
• TradFi to Crypto Risk Translation (nice to have): Translate traditional financial risk methodologies into crypto-native environments, adapting models to account for 24/7 markets, fragmented liquidity, funding dynamics, on-chain transparency and new failure modes (e.g. oracle risk, protocol risk).

Experience required

• Quantitative Risk Expertise: Strong foundation in quantitative risk management, including hands-on experience with market risk, credit risk and liquidity risk modelling, ideally aligned with frameworks such as those presented in Quantitative Risk Management (McNeil, Frey, Embrechts).
• Modelling & Analytical Skills: Demonstrated ability to design and implement risk models, including tail risk estimation, scenario analysis, stress testing frameworks and dependence modelling across asset classes.
• System Design & Cross-Functional Leadership: Proven experience in designing or co-designing firm-wide risk systems, working closely with technology and operations teams to translate risk requirements into scalable infrastructure.
• Crypto-Specific Risk Understanding (nice to have): Practical knowledge of crypto-specific risks, including exchange/custodian risk, smart contract risk, protocol risk, funding/basis dynamics and collateral management in both centralized and decentralized environments.