The Diagnosis
Most recruiters ask what you want to hire. We ask what problem the hire is supposed to solve, because in short-term power trading those are rarely the same thing.
A job spec tells us the title, the location and the salary band. It does not tell us whether the problem is that your desk is scaling, a strategy hit a ceiling, or someone left and took a capability with them. Those are three different problems and each needs a different approach. So the first conversation is always about the desk.
What happens, in order.
Desk Architecture
Do traders write strategies or supervise vendor algos? Who trades the exceptions? Who holds the kill switch? Each answer implies a different trader, quant and engineering profile.
The Build vs Buy Line
With execution increasingly off the shelf, the edge sits in forecasting and signals. On which side of the line do the people sit?
Asset-Backed Reality
BESS, flex and renewables mandates look similar on paper and are nothing alike in practice. A physical toll turns the owner's trading role into asset management, and merchant seats are measured against hindsight benchmarks, not raw P&L.
Market Entry and Access
New geographies and products come with friction that is rarely explained: memberships, collateral, balancing regime knowledge, operational readiness. Sometimes the solution is regulatory rather than trading.
Ownership and Incentives
Does the seat come with a path to a mandate? For quants, that increasingly means ownership of the stack, not just a payout formula. If that path exists, a different approach is required.
45 minutes to get your diagnosis.
Context First. Where the desk is now, where it is going, what has changed recently.
The Problem. What is broken or missing, and what does it look like when fixed.
Next Steps. Which search fits the seat.
A call will feel like talking to someone from inside your world.
Heads of trading, heads of quant and founders across European short-term power: intraday, day-ahead, balancing, cross-border, algorithmic and asset-backed desks, plus the forecasting, optimisation, technology and risk functions around them.
Senior power trading, quant and optimisation hires across European markets.