Prop trading firm DRW has been doing some big hiring in Asia
As we observed earlier this week, plenty of prop trading firms are hiring in the Asia Pacific region. However, we omitted one name from our list: DRW, the Chicago-based firm which opened a Hong Kong office in 2023, an expansion on the Singapore office it opened in 2015.
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Sources say that DRW now has 100 people in Singapore, up from 70 or so last year. It's also understood to have 20 in Hong Kong, where Stuart Knowling was hired from Instinet Incorporated two and a half years ago, and has been building a team based first in London and then HK.
A spokesperson for DRW said the firm sees “exciting opportunities in the APAC region,” and that it intended to keep “building on the vision we had when we opened our Singapore office over a decade ago.” The firm is known for being as much “highly sophisticated family office” as it is an electronic trading firm. “It’s Don’s shop”, one insider told the FT in November last year, referring to DRW’s founder, Don Wilson.
One measure of DRW's Singaporean aspirations is its job openings in the city: it currently has 16 vacancies, versus only two in Hong Kong, covering everything from quantitative developer, researcher, and trader roles. It also has opening for a “Crypto Associate Relationship Manager” (DRW's Singapore presence began as a crypto trading desk in 2017). Speaking in 2023, Knowling said he planned to hire “portfolio managers, traders, and technical staff” in Asia.
The firm has the potential to expand more. It is thought to be looking for quant, mid-frequency equities, and development resources professionals. Many of the new roles officially based in Singapore will be fungible between the city and Hong Kong.
Knowling didn't respond to a request to comment for this article, but some of his recent hires in the region include Frank Liao and Vidur Singhal, a quant researcher and an energy analyst respectively, from Millennium and JERA global markets, respectively.
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