Data Strategist

Selby Jennings; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Selby Jennings’ client, a leading proprietary trading firm, seeks a Data Product Manager, Research Platform to join a centralized data organization supporting traders, quantitative researchers, and engineering teams. This role shapes and scales the research data platform, ensuring datasets are accessible, discoverable, and aligned to front-office needs.

The candidate will blend strong financial markets knowledge with data product experience, working across business and technical stakeholders in

Qualifications

• 5+ years supporting front-office stakeholders in trading, hedge funds, or banks.
• Strong knowledge of equities, options, futures, and other instruments.
• Experience with market, research, or enterprise data platforms.
• Translate business needs into scalable data solutions.
• Partner with traders, researchers, PMs, and quantitative teams.
• Proficient in SQL and Python (Pandas).

Responsibilities

• Partner directly with traders, quantitative researchers, and engineering teams to understand data requirements.
• Evaluate, onboard, and manage new datasets throughout their lifecycle.
• Improve dataset discoverability, metadata, and platform usability.
• Collaborate with data engineers to prioritize initiatives and deliver scalable data products.
• Own stakeholder engagement during data onboarding, ensuring cross-team alignment.
• Assess new data offerings and manage vendor relationships.
• Analyze datasets for quality, completeness, accessibility, and business value.
• Support access management and entitlements for dataset use.
• Promote platform capabilities to front-office users.
• Stay informed on market data and data tech developments to identify enhancements.

Skills

Financial markets knowledge

Stakeholder collaboration

Data platform experience

SQL

Python

Pandas

Communication skills

Data governance awareness

Tools

Snowflake

AWS S3

Alation

Collibra

Atlan

DataHub

Job description

Our client is a leading proprietary trading firm operating across global financial markets. Known for its exceptional culture, the firm has built a reputation as one of the industry's premier destinations for top talent. The environment is fast-paced, highly collaborative, and built around individuals who thrive on solving complex problems and continuously improving.

The Role

Our client is seeking a Data Product Manager, Research Platform to join a centralized data organization supporting traders, quantitative researchers, and engineering teams across the firm.

This role is responsible for helping shape and scale the firm's research data platform by ensuring critical datasets are accessible, discoverable, and aligned to the needs of front-office users. The ideal candidate will combine strong financial markets knowledge with data platform experience and the ability to work across business and technical stakeholders.

This is a highly visible position with broad exposure across the organization, offering the opportunity to influence how market, research, and alternative data are sourced, managed, and utilized to support investment decisions.

Responsibilities

• Partner directly with traders, quantitative researchers, and engineering teams to understand data requirements and recommend solutions.
• Evaluate, onboard, and manage new market data, research data, and alternative datasets throughout their lifecycle.
• Drive improvements to dataset discoverability, metadata, and platform usability.
• Collaborate with data engineers to prioritize initiatives and deliver scalable data products.
• Own stakeholder engagement throughout the data onboarding process, ensuring alignment across business and technology teams.
• Work closely with vendors and internal stakeholders to assess new data offerings and support ongoing vendor relationships.
• Analyze datasets to ensure quality, completeness, accessibility, and business value.
• Partner with teams responsible for access management and entitlements to ensure users can efficiently leverage available datasets.
• Promote adoption of research platform capabilities across front-office users.
• Stay informed on developments across market data, alternative data, and research technologies to identify opportunities for platform enhancement.
  

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience supporting front-office stakeholders within trading firms, hedge funds, asset managers, banks, exchanges, or market data organizations.
• Strong understanding of financial markets and instruments, including equities, options, futures, fixed income, FX, commodities, and alternative investments.
• Experience working with market data, research data, alternative data, reference data, or enterprise data platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into scalable data solutions.
• Experience partnering with traders, researchers, portfolio managers, quantitative teams, or investment professionals.
• Hands-on experience with SQL and Python, including data analysis using Pandas or similar libraries.
• Experience working with Snowflake, AWS S3, or comparable cloud-based data platforms.
• Strong communication, organization, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to operate effectively within a fast-paced, highly collaborative trading environment.
• Preferred Experience
• Data cataloging and metadata management platforms such as Alation, Collibra, Atlan, or DataHub.
• Data governance, lineage, onboarding, or data quality initiatives.
• Data product ownership within a research, market data, or analytics environment.
• Vendor evaluation and third-party data acquisition.
• Supporting quantitative research or investment workflows.

Why Join?

• Direct partnership with traders and quantitative researchers.
• Opportunity to influence firm-wide data strategy and platform adoption.
• Exposure to a broad range of datasets, asset classes, and investment strategies.
• High-impact role positioned at the intersection of trading, research, data, and technology.
• Collaborative environment that values autonomy, innovation, and continuous improvement.