Lead Data Analyst

About the job

Jump Trading Group is committed to world class research. We empower exceptional talents in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science to seek scientific boundaries, push through them, and apply cutting edge research to global financial markets. Our culture is unique. Constant innovation requires fearlessness, creativity, intellectual honesty, and a relentless competitive streak. We believe in winning together and unlocking unique individual talent by incenting collaboration and mutual respect. At Jump, research outcomes drive more than superior risk adjusted returns. We design, develop, and deploy technologies that change our world, fund start-ups across industries, and partner with leading global research organizations and universities to solve problems.

Our Data team is responsible for building a world class Data Platform with a centralized source of vendor and proprietary research data. We operate in a very dynamic environment utilizing a sophisticated and diverse technology stack. The team interfaces with all aspects of the firm, from Trading, Research, and Technology to Risk, Middle Office and Accounting – providing individuals within the group a full 360-degree view of Jump. Our Proprietary Data team collects and builds research-ready datasets, financial and non-financial, from primary sources, vendors, and public data; cleans, tags, and organizes them with consistent identifiers, taxonomies, and metadata; sources data not available from vendors and evaluates its quality and provenance. It performs deep data analysis, identifies and corrects data quality issues, and surfaces the conventions behind the datasets we use. The team provides human-in-the-loop review for automated and AI-driven pipelines; and partners with engineers to turn manual workflows into repeatable, automated processes.

This is a senior, hands-on leadership role, working closely with researchers, traders, and engineers across the firm. The role offers the individual the opportunity to develop both business and technical expertise, while significantly contributing to our whole platform.

What You’ll Do:

- The ideal candidate will be able to dig into the details of the data and work with end-users to understand their needs and deliver results. We are looking for individuals who are instinctively curious self-starters, demonstrating the ability to independently drive tasks and projects to completion in a team environment. Curiosity, focus, attention to detail, and a genuine enjoyment of learning are essential to this role.

- As Lead Data Analyst, you will lead that team day to day. You will: · Coordinate the team’s work: translate requests from researchers, traders, and engineers into well-defined projects, set priorities across competing demands, and drive them to completion.

- Own quality: set the standards for how data is collected, tagged, documented, and validated, and review the team’s output before it reaches the researchers and traders who depend on it.

- Guide individual analysts: assign work suited to each analyst’s strengths and development, give regular and specific feedback, and coach them on data research techniques and the effective use of modern AI tools.

- Stay hands-on: take on the most ambiguous and highest-stakes data problems yourself, and model the curiosity and rigor expected of the team.

- Serve as the primary point of contact for the team: understand the business needs, communicate findings and status clearly and concisely, and manage expectations.

- Partner with data engineers to decide which manual workflows to automate and ensure automated and AI-driven pipelines keep appropriate human-in-the-loop review.

- Other duties as assigned or needed.

Skills You'll Need:

- 7+ years of hands-on experience working with data in the financial industry, at a trading firm, hedge fund, bank, or a vendor serving those institutions.

- 3+ years of experience leading complex projects and other analysts.

- Direct experience collecting, tagging, and cleaning data; experience on a trading firm’s alternative or proprietary data team, or at a vendor selling to such teams, strongly preferred.

- Familiarity and breadth with alternative data, fundamental data, market data, and reference data.

- Expertise in at least one asset class, such as equities, options, futures, ETFs, or FX, including its data and market conventions.

- Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, and Excel for data analysis and manipulation.

- Experience using modern AI tools, such as LLMs, agents, and coding assistants, to accelerate data collection, cleaning, tagging, and research.

- Exceptional attention to detail, with a focused and methodical approach to work.

- Deep curiosity about data and the markets and businesses behind it; enjoys learning and picks up new domains and tools quickly.

- Excellent written and verbal communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to communicate concisely to technical and non-technical audiences.

- Reliable and predictable availability.