Emerald Zebra Recruitment & Executive Search
Chief Operating Officer
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Operations Manager / Chief Operating Officer
Our client is a proprietary trading firm and alternative investment manager focused on quantitative and fundamental sports trading. With professionals based across Europe, Asia and the US, they combine deep research with proprietary, technology-driven methodologies to trade major public sports exchanges and markets.
Contract type: Permanent, Full-time
Location: Central London (Hybrid) — candidates must be located in London
Reports to: Founder & Chief Investment Officer
Salary: Up to £120,000 plus equity, plus performance bonus
Visa sponsorship: Not available; candidates must already hold the right to work in the UK
Languages: Russian speaker ideal
About the Business
Our client is a proprietary trading firm and alternative investment manager focused on quantitative and fundamental sports trading. With professionals based across Europe, Asia and the US, they combine deep research with proprietary, technology-driven methodologies to trade major public sports exchanges and markets.
Their trading philosophy is rooted in a passion for competitive sports and quantitative research. By applying predictive systems alongside seasoned market expertise, they aim to deliver sustainable short- and long-term, risk-adjusted returns with little to no correlation to traditional financial markets. The firm runs systematic strategies across the world's most actively traded sports, identifying market inefficiencies and diversifying capital across multiple wagering categories, including spreads, totals, and related markets.
Role Overview
This role is designed for a hands-on operator who wants to work close to the engine room of a trading business.
The Operations Manager / COO will take ownership of day-to-day operational execution across trading operations, risk processes, capital flows, and cross-team coordination. The focus is not on corporate overhead, but on ensuring the machine runs cleanly, predictably, and safely as trading activity scales.
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This is a build-and-own position, not simply a maintenance role. Sitting close to the CEO, the role acts as the operational backbone of the business. It requires strong judgment in high-pressure environments, the ability to translate strategy into execution, and comfort operating across trading operations, process design, risk coordination, and cross-functional delivery. The ideal candidate is a hands-on operator who can bring clarity, cadence, and accountability to a performance-driven organisation without imposing unnecessary bureaucracy.
This position is suited to someone with experience building operational infrastructure in live, high-stakes environments, who is motivated by ownership, impact, and long-term platform quality rather than the maintenance of legacy systems.
Key Responsibilities
- Oversee trading operations across all strategies, ensuring consistent execution standards, effective monitoring, and timely intervention when performance deviates from expectations
- Partner closely with traders and researchers to ensure operational processes actively support strategy performance
- Maintain operational oversight of capital allocation, execution workflows, and performance reporting
- Implement and maintain frameworks for operational risk controls, exposure management, and decision-making during periods of drawdown or elevated volatility
- Act as a central coordination point between trading, research, engineering, and external service providers
- Ensure operational dependencies are managed effectively and issues are identified and resolved promptly
- Oversee operational infrastructure, including data flows, tooling, reporting processes, and relationships with platforms, counterparties, and vendors
- Contribute to hiring, team structure, and organisational scaling as the business grows
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Background and Experience
The ideal candidate will have held operational or leadership responsibility within a performance-driven, trading-focused environment. Relevant backgrounds may include:
- Sports betting syndicates or professional betting operations
- Proprietary trading firms or hedge funds
- Quantitative or systematic trading businesses
- Execution-focused trading or risk management roles
- Senior operations, desk management, or COO roles in data-driven organisations
Candidates may come from Operations Manager, Head of Trading Operations, Trading Manager, COO, or similar roles, provided they have had direct responsibility for operational performance and cross-functional coordination.
Skills and Attributes
- Strong operational judgement and attention to detail
- Ability to prioritise effectively in fast-moving, high-pressure environments
- Comfortable making decisions under uncertainty and communicating clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Solid understanding of trading execution, operational risk, and performance monitoring
- High level of technical literacy, particularly around trading systems, data pipelines, and execution tooling
- Pragmatic, results-focused mindset with the ability to balance strategic oversight and hands-on involvement
- Russian speaker preferred
Benefits
- Salary: Up to £120,000, plus equity, plus performance bonus
- Profit-share bonus
- KPI-based bonus scheme
- 30 days holiday (excluding bank holidays)
- Private health, dental, and vision insurance
- Life and accident insurance
Please note: no visa sponsorship is available for this role. Candidates must be based in London.
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