Senior Quantitative Engineer - Exotic Derivatives (15+yrs exp)
My global financial service company is looking for an experienced Quantitative Engineer specialising in exotic Derivatives to join their team in London on a contract basis.
This role is for a hands-on quant engineer with 15+ years of demonstrable experience independently designing, implementing, and delivering production-grade pricing and risk models for exotic derivatives across Equity, Rates, FX, and Commodities.
This is not a managerial or advisory role. The expectation is deep hands-on ownership: modelling, numerical implementation, performance optimisation, and direct contribution to live analytics and trading systems.
Essential skills
... - 15+ years of hands-on experience as a quantitative developer / quant engineer (not only modelling or only engineering)
- Advanced degree (Master's or PhD preferred) in Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, or Computer Science, or equivalent demonstrable commercial experience at senior level
- Expected to operate as a true senior IC, delivering tangible outcomes quickly
- Requires strong autonomy, accountability, and minimal hand-holding
- Proven experience independently building pricing and risk models that have run in production
- Deep experience with exotic derivatives across Equity, Rates, FX, and/or Commodities
- Strong understanding of front-to-back derivative lifecycle, not just valuation
Track record of personally authored quantitative components, such as: - Pricing libraries
- Risk engines
- Exotic payoff models
- Calibration frameworks
- Ability to explain and defend modelling choices under scrutiny from trading, risk, or clients
- You should be able to clearly articulate what you personally built, why it was implemented that way, and how it behaved in production.
Technical Skills
- Strong production experience in Java, C++, and/or Python (numerically intensive code, not scripting only)
- Advanced numerical computing and algorithm design
- Solid understanding of performance optimisation and memory management
- Experience working with shared analytics services and distributed systems
- Comfortable working with imperfect data, legacy systems, and real-world constraints
Role Duties
As a Distinguished Quantitative Engineer, you will:
- Independently design, implement, and validate pricing and risk models for complex and exotic OTC derivatives
- Own models end-to-end: mathematical formulation → numerical method → code → calibration → production rollout
- Build and evolve core analytics libraries used for valuation, sensitivities, scenarios, and XVA
- Implement advanced numerical techniques:
- Monte Carlo methods (including variance reduction)
- Tree / lattice methods
- PDE approaches
- Curve construction, interpolation, and bootstrapping
- Work directly with real-world market data, calibrations, fixings, and conventions across asset classes
- Deliver high-performance, low-latency implementations suitable for large books and intraday risk
- Review, debug, and improve existing quantitative codebases with a focus on correctness, stability, and scalability
- Act as a technical authority, setting engineering standards for analytics quality and implementation rigor
- Partner with product and stakeholders to ensure models reflect real market behaviour, not academic simplifications
The role is a 12 months initial contract and offers hybrid working with 2 / 3 days a week expected to be worked from Canary Wharf (London) and the remainder to be worked remotely.
I have interview slots ready to be filled so get in touch ASAP to find out more.
Randstad Technologies is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.
