5 Easy Fixes to Stop Repelling Top Trading Tech Talent
You say you want high performers.
But your hiring process is designed for average.
In the world of trading technology, speed, precision, and performance are everything.
And yet, when it comes to hiring, the same companies building low-latency infrastructure and scalable SaaS platforms often have clunky, misaligned, or slow recruitment processes.
If your top candidates keep vanishing…
If you’re struggling to hire across dev, data, infra, or product…
If the bar isn’t getting higher…
Here’s where I’d start.
1. You want speed, but haven’t created any ownership
📉 The problem:
You need a C++ engineer yesterday. But internally? No one owns the timeline. No one’s accountable for momentum. The process drags, and your top candidate just accepted an offer at a hedge fund.
⛑️ Quick Fix:
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Assign ONE process owner, ideally someone technical + commercial.
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Build a hiring timeline with SLAs.
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Create internal urgency that matches market urgency.
🔧 If I were you:
I’d make sure your hiring flow doesn’t lag behind the latency of your product. Top engineers aren’t waiting around.
2. You want bar-raisers, but your team can’t define “great”
📉 The problem:
You want someone who “gets trading,” “can scale the platform,” and “won’t need handholding”, but no one has defined what that actually means in this role.
⛑️ Quick Fix:
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Build a Performance Profile: What outcomes must this person deliver in 6–12 months?
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Clarify what “good” vs. “great” looks like, especially across tech and product.
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Use it to align hiring managers before you interview.
🔧 If I were you:
I’d get tech leads, product, and business in a 20-minute huddle to agree on what success looks like, not just what tools they’ve used.
3. You want engagement, but your interviews feel like audits
📉 The problem:
Your interviews feel like due diligence on a legacy system: cold, transactional, and full of traps. There’s no story, no hook, no real energy.
⛑️ Quick Fix:
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Kick off interviews with the “why” behind the role: What are you building? Why now? Why this hire?
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Coach your team to engage, not just interrogate.
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Show candidates how their work links to trading outcomes, not just tickets.
🔧 If I were you:
I’d run a mock interview with your team and ask: “Would you be excited to join after that?”
4. You want confidence, but decisions are based on gut feel
📉 The problem:
You’re hiring developers, quants, or infra engineers, but you don’t use scorecards. You debrief in Slack. Your feedback loops are inconsistent.
⛑️ Quick Fix:
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Create a scorecard with clear must-haves, nice-to-haves, and red flags.
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Collect structured feedback before debriefs.
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Make hiring a decision-making process, not a gut instinct competition.
🔧 If I were you:
I’d stop asking “What did you think?” and start asking “How did they score on X?”
5. You want long-term impact, but hire for short-term patching
📉 The problem:
You optimise for “can start fast” and “knows our stack” rather than “can grow our platform” or “level up the team.”
⛑️ Quick Fix:
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Define what this person should own, not just what they’ll do.
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Consider “shape of mind” over “years of experience.”
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Ask: Is this hire solving a today problem or building tomorrow’s system?
🔧 If I were you:
I’d start every debrief with: “What could this person own in 12 months?” Not just “Can they deliver next sprint?”
Final Thought:
In trading tech, time kills deals and great candidates.
You probably don’t have a talent shortage.
You have a process problem.
And the good news? It’s fixable.
We help trading technology firms build high-performance hiring engines.
That means:
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Role clarity your team aligns on
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Candidate experiences that excite the best
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Structured decision-making that reduces risk and ghosting
Let’s fix the process so you can hire who you actually want.