Executive Search Consultant (Systematic Trading) in London

Location: London (Hybrid/Remote)

Onyx Alpha Partners is a highly specialized search boutique focusing exclusively on short-horizon systematic futures and fixed income strategies. We do not operate as generalist recruiters. Our clients are exclusively top-tier multi-strategy hedge funds and premier proprietary trading desks who retain us on a premium fee structure to capture elite quantitative talent. We are a small, founder-led firm operating at the absolute sharp end of the buy-side talent market, and we are hiring our first core delivery layer in London.

This is a high-conviction, delivery-focused seat designed for an exceptional relationship-builder. This is explicitly not a traditional, transactional recruitment role. There is no cold business development, no random KPI-chasing, and no quick-turnover volume. Instead, this is a strategic "relationship farming" mandate. Your single objective is to manage, nurture, and systematically advance an elite network of over 40 passive, top-tier quantitative portfolio management candidates across rolling 6-month cycles.

Onyx is in its fourth year. We are deliberately built small, highly focused, and exceptionally high-margin. You are not joining a sprawling agency with a slow, structured corporate career ladder. Instead, you are entering at a clear inflection point—where our client relationships are deeply established, our brand is proven, and the primary bottleneck is simply founder execution bandwidth. For the right professional, this is the clearest path available to develop genuine market expertise, build an elite network, and earn at a level that few institutional seats at your current stage can match.

The Core Focus

• Systematic Cadence Engineering: Own and independently run a disciplined 30/60/90-day relationship touchpoint loop with passive candidates, ensuring no high-value connection cools off.
• Mandate Briefing & First-Touch: Initiate high-signal, credible outreach from structured hotlists, effectively profiling and briefing sophisticated candidates on complex, cross-asset buy-side mandates.
• Pipeline Hygiene & Management: Maintain absolute operational mastery of the daily CRM data stream, keeping candidate mapping context current so pipeline velocity moves continuously in the background.

The Structural Edge

Proprietary AI & Intelligence Layer: You will be supported by a proprietary, AI-optimized research and intelligence engine that automates market mapping, candidate classification, and real-time career readiness signal detection at scale. This is not a role where you build your database from scratch. You step directly into a continuously enriched, warm pipeline and an operating system designed to make your research and execution faster, sharper, and more data-driven than anything available inside a traditional legacy search firm.

Ideal Profile Archetypes

We are intentionally open-minded about your specific professional background. We care less about a specific logo on your CV and far more about your commercial instinct, organizational discipline, and genuine market curiosity. We find the highest alignment in individuals with 2–6 years of experience coming from one of the following domains:

• Pool 1: Financial Data & FinTech Account Management
  • The Background: Experience within tier-1 financial data providers, market intelligence platforms, or specialized fintech firms.
  • The Fit: You have spent 3–6 years managing large account books where retention, relationship depth, and high renewal rates are your primary metrics. You excel at long-cycle, proactive communication and comfortably speak financial market terminology.
• Pool 2: Strategy & Financial Consulting
  • The Background: Experience within strategic advisory practices, capital markets consulting groups, or financial services consulting teams.
  • The Fit: You have an economics or finance foundation with exposure to markets-adjacent project work. You are client-facing, commercially driven, and looking to exit rigid advisory structures for direct ownership and visible impact.
• Pool 3A: Prime Brokerage Client Services
  • The Background: Experience working within prime brokerage desks or clearing services teams at major global investment banks.
  • The Fit: You are used to managing demanding buy-side counterparties (hedge funds and prop desks). You possess natural market credibility, understand how fund infrastructure operates under stress, and want to transition your service discipline into a high-upside commercial environment.
• Pool 3B: Sell-Side Sales / Coverage
  • The Background: Experience working on liquid macro sales, futures, or execution desks at global financial institutions.
  • The Fit: You have institutional coverage experience, a high tolerance for rejection, and strong outbound muscle. You are commercially hungry but possess the patience and emotional intelligence required to manage a long-term relationship cycle.

The Non-Negotiables

• Long-Cycle Mastery: A clear, demonstrable track record of managing long-cycle relationships. Churn-and-burn transactional profiles will not fit our culture.
• Autonomous Follow-Through: Obsessive internal organization. You systematically surface updates, execute tasks, and track cadences without needing internal reminders or management oversight.
• Instant Phone Credibility: Exceptional communication presence. While you do not need to be a quantitative genius on day one, you must possess the intellect and polish to maintain a peer-level dialogue with a senior trader or quantitative researcher.

Compensation & The Upside

Base Draw: £50,000 per annum. The Commission Structure: We do not offer vague "competitive" packages. Onyx operates on a premium, institutional fee model on large buy-side mandates. Because of this, our performance upside is highly concentrated: a single attributable placement per year generates a commission event that materially exceeds your entire base draw. If you possess the execution discipline to maintain our relationship cycle, the mathematical path to out-earning your peer group in consulting, data sales, or banking is direct and entirely transparent.

How to Apply

To apply, send your CV along with a brief, two-sentence note outlining which pool archetype (1, 2, 3A, or 3B) best describes your professional background and why you fit it, directly to tmorapedi@onyxalpha.io.