A secretive electronic trading firm is raising pay to retain elite engineers eyeing exits
G-Research is one of the most established algorithmic trading firms in the UK, but has been expanding across the pond by building out its Dallas tech hub and satellite teams in cities like New York. Back home, however, it's thought to be having trouble retaining staff in one of its most prestigious divisions.
Insiders say that G-Research's infrastructure and high-performance computing teams are thought to have built "substantial computational infrastructure that has given the firm a significant competitive advantage." Many members of the team have spent more than a decade with the firm, but there have been multiple high-profile exits in recent years. One of the most recent is Michael McClenahan, a 20-year alum and a technical lead in the infrastructure, compute and storage team, who left for quant hedge fund Qube Research in July.
Members of the infrastructure team have been sought after for years; Anthony Perot left for Hudson River Trading back in 2023 to build out the firm's on-premises Kubernetes platform "from scratch." Glassdoor reviews say G-Research is rumoured to have "one of the biggest private-sector Kubernetes environments on the planet."
Exits are rumoured to be exacerbated by the firm's growth in Dallas. The firm currently has 20 job openings in infrastructure, 16 of which are in the US office. Of the four London openings, two are also contract hires. G-Research cut 100 technologists earlier this year as part of this shift to Dallas, while also increasing the length of non-competes for its quant developers and quant researchers to 3 years.
G-Research may not be keen on hiring London infrastructure people, but it's alleged to be increasing pay to keep them from leaving. As of 2022, firmwide average pay was $292k (except for the firm's partners, who made over $3m that year). The pay offered to these engineers is supposedly well in excess of that figure.
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