How short-term power hiring moved this year
Desks spent the year hiring against volatility rather than against growth.
The distinction matters because the two produce different vacancies. Growth hiring adds seats: a second intraday trader, a first cross-border book, a desk in a new country. Volatility hiring adds capability to seats that already exist: someone who can run a balancing position through a tight evening, someone who can rebid a battery when the afternoon forecast breaks, someone whose model still works when the price does something the backtest never saw.
This year was the second kind. The roles that moved on the register were balancing, intraday and anything touching batteries. The roles that did not move were the ones a desk can defer for another quarter: the third analyst, the platform rebuild, the succession plan. Deferral is rational when margins compress, and it stores up the same hiring for later, which is worth knowing if you are planning to compete for those people in the spring.
Two patterns underneath the headline. First, the battery effect keeps spreading beyond battery roles. Optimisation vacancies pull forecasting vacancies behind them, and both pull data engineering, because an asset that earns in intraday and balancing markets needs all three close together. A desk that hires the optimiser without the pipeline behind them discovers the dependency within a quarter.
Second, the profile of the trader vacancies changed more than their number. Briefs increasingly ask for people who can supervise automated flow as well as trade manually, which is a different person from either the pure algo supervisor or the pure discretionary trader. The settlement piece on this site traces where that shortage comes from; the point here is narrower. The hybrid is scarce now, and the desks writing those briefs are mostly competing for the same short list of names without knowing it.
What this means for a desk planning next year: if the seat you deferred is on that list, the pool did not grow while you waited. The census for the role will tell you whether the deferral cost you anything before you restart the search.
Case notes, desk-build maps and real moves across European power.
Interview processes at trading firms are usually short and usually good. Traders interviewing traders ask sharp questions, decisions come quickly, and the candidate leaves with a clear picture of the book, the risk lines and the people.
A CV shows employers and dates. For a power trading hire, that is most of what it shows, and it is not the information the decision needs. Four things are worth establishing before an interview, not during one.
On a desk of six, losing one trader is a material event, and everyone involved knows it. The head of desk knows what the book loses. The trader knows what their departure costs.
Senior power trading, quant and optimisation hires across European markets.