Head of Risk

About the role

This is an individual contributor seat, built from scratch: no team to manage, no outside investors to report to, and no inherited framework. The work is yours to do, not to delegate. What you’ll own The map of the book. A living inventory of every position: why it’s on, what would take it off, and what it’s exposed to, by name, theme and factor. Thesis hygiene. A daily read of positions against the firm’s current views, with stale, contradictory or mis-sized positions flagged the day they happen. The clean-up. Positions nobody is watching, residual pieces of old trades, exposures that drifted. You find them and get them resolved. Exposure and scenario views sized to how we actually trade, in terms the principal will act on. Counterparty, financing and operational exposures across our brokers and platforms: known, sized, and on the same map as the positions. What we need to see. You define the data and views this seat requires and the tech team builds to your spec. The daily note. One short, decision-ready view each day: what changed, what’s stale, what needs a decision.

Requirements

• We hire for demonstrated judgment and how you think, not for pedigree. You’ve done this job (at a fund, a family office, a prop desk, or on the risk side of a bank) and you know what a clean risk process looks like because you’ve run one. We look for evidence that you are:
• Careful by temperament. Loose ends bother you.
• Fluent in risk, allergic to taking it. You understand positioning, derivatives, factor exposure, liquidity and counterparty risk well enough to see what a discretionary book is really exposed to, and you have no wish to express a view of your own.
• Comfortable with a principal who changes direction fast. You don’t need the world to be orderly; you make the book orderly inside a fast-moving process.
• A plain communicator. You say “this doesn’t belong anymore” in one sentence and back it with the numbers in the next.
• Low ego, truth-seeking, and driven. Quick to update when the facts change, and unbothered by telling an experienced principal that a position is stale.
• How you work
• Self-directed. Nobody will hand you a limits framework or a risk committee. You’ll define the process.
• Hands on. You do the work yourself, every day.
• Builder minded. You can specify, and ideally prototype, what you need to see (Python, SQL or spreadsheets) rather than waiting for a system.
• Proportionate. You know which exposures matter for a book like ours and which are institutional theatre, and you spend your attention accordingly.
• AI-native. Fluent with modern AI tools for surveillance, synthesis and reporting, with a trust-but-verify discipline on their output.
• Fast and collaborative. You operate at the speed of markets, work closely with the trading desk and the tech team, and make the people around you sharper.
• Core skills
• Book reading. Seeing a concentrated book as a set of exposures rather than a list of tickers.
• Thesis-to-position mapping. Translating a discretionary view into what should and shouldn’t be on, and keeping that mapping current.
• Scenario thinking. Factor, theme and liquidity scenarios that produce decisions, not reports.
• Counterparty and operational awareness. Knowing where a book is exposed beyond the positions themselves, and keeping that in view.
• Data specification. Knowing what a risk function needs from position, broker and internal data, and asking for it precisely.
• Operating discipline. Daily rhythm, documentation that survives you, and follow-through on every flag until it’s resolved.
• What we offer
• A direct line to the principal and a seat beside the decisions your work protects.
• A well-capitalized firm with a distinctive approach to markets and a clean slate to define how risk works here.
• A small, discreet team that values intellectual honesty, independent judgment and speed over hierarchy and process.
• Upside tied to how much cleaner and better-protected the book is because you exist.
• Remote; US market hours.
• Listed by
• Deeter Analytics
• Apply now Share this job