Options Trader - Trading Team
Quantitative Research · London · Full-time · On-site
Annual base salary: £160,000 – £200,000 GBP
Trade options and volatility products across digital asset venues, managing a live risk book.
Role description
Westren Capital is a London-based proprietary trading firm specialising in digital asset markets. Our volatility desk trades options and related derivatives across major digital asset venues, running both directional and relative-value strategies across the vol surface.
The desk operates with direct capital allocation and full ownership over risk within defined limits. Traders here are expected to understand the instruments they trade at a structural level, not just the position they currently hold, and to build the tools and judgement needed to manage risk in a market that doesn't pause for weekends or liquidity gaps.
Responsibilities
Manage a book of options positions across digital asset venues, with responsibility for sizing, hedging, and unwind decisions
Identify and trade dislocations in implied volatility, skew, and term structure across venues and expiries
Build and refine pricing and risk tools with quant and engineering teams, rather than relying on off-the-shelf models that don't reflect the market you're actually in
Manage delta, gamma, and vega exposure in real time, including through periods of extreme realised volatility
Work closely with risk and treasury on margin, collateral, and counterparty exposure tied to the book
Continuously refine trading logic based on what the market actually does, not what the model assumed it would do
Requirements
Requirements:
Demonstrated experience trading options or volatility products, ideally in a proprietary or market-making environment
Strong quantitative grounding in options pricing, the Greeks, and volatility surface dynamics
Comfortable making sizing and risk decisions under pressure, without waiting for someone else to make the call
Programming ability in Python and/or C++ sufficient to build and adapt your own tools rather than depend entirely on others
Prior exposure to crypto derivatives markets is a strong advantage given how differently they behave from traditional vol markets
A track record of taking ownership of a book and being accountable for its performance, not just its logic