Head of Trading

About the Company

Grove Labs is a blockchain research and development organization focused on next‑generation decentralized credit infrastructure. As a subsidiary of Steakhouse Financial, Grove Labs designs and builds the Grove Protocol; an institutional‑grade credit platform that acts as a liquidity engine for decentralized finance and a capital highway between DeFi and traditional markets.

Operating as a “Star” within the Sky Ecosystem (formerly MakerDAO), Grove helps protocols, DAOs, asset managers, and institutions deploy capital into diversified, tokenized credit strategies, creating more efficient, programmable, and transparent global credit markets.

We are assembling a multidisciplinary team across credit, engineering, risk, and governance to shape the future of institutional DeFi.

About the Role

As Head of Trading and Market Structure, you will be responsible for developing and operating trading activities where active market participation supports our asset management, vault, and risk businesses. The initial focus of the role is running market neutral and delta neutral strategies, including basis and funding capture, across centralized venues and onchain infrastructure. Beyond day to day execution, the role involves evaluating how and when additional forms of trading, liquidity provision, or structured capital deployment makes sense within Steakhouse’s broader platform. This is a senior role and you will help set the standards for how trading capital is deployed, how risk is measured and controlled, and how trading integrates with underwriting, product design, and engineering over time.

What You'll Do

• Own the basis book: define trade selection, sizing, and guardrails while maintaining near‑zero net delta.
• Choose the best hedge (dated futures vs. perps vs. forwards) and manage rolls, term structure, and funding‑rate regimes with clear attribution.
• Execute cross‑venue (CME, regulated venues, major CEX/DEX): routing, order types, slippage control, and incident playbooks.
• Optimize collateral & financing across USD, stablecoins, and liquid RWAs (e.g., T‑bills wrappers), balancing yield, haircuts, and liquidity.
• Define strategy parameters and risk inputs for delta‑neutral vaults on decentralized vault infrastructure, turning the internal strategy into onchain products with well‑defined risk/return profiles.
• Work closely with engineering to specify vault logic and parameters (allocation rules, rebalancing cadence, fee structure, risk limits), and ensure robust implementations.
• Monitor vault health end‑to‑end: TVL and utilization, yield vs. target, deviations from model, and the interaction between on‑chain vault state and off‑chain hedging venues.
• Establish and maintain controls: real‑time delta tracking, margin and liquidation buffers, kill‑switches, circuit‑breakers, and alerting for 24/7 markets at both the strategy and vault level.
• Quantify everything: daily three‑line PnL (carry/funding, explicit costs, slippage/impact), stress tests (funding inversions, basis compressions, venue outages), and capacity analysis; extend this to vault‑level performance and risk reporting.
• Coordinate the stack with engineering, risk, ops, legal/compliance, custody/prime partners, and vault infrastructure partners; document runbooks and maintain audit‑ready processes.
• Continuously improve: refine execution models, collateral routing, data‑driven sizing, and vault design to increase net capture after all frictions and fees.

What We're Looking For

• Proven derivatives PM/trader with 3–5+ years running cash‑and‑carry / basis / funding capture in crypto or closely related RV in TradFi (equity index, rates, commodities futures).
• Demonstrated PnL attribution for a delta‑neutral book (basis/funding vs. fees/borrow/financing vs. slippage/impact) and a clear risk framework (limits, scenarios, drawdown controls).
• Crypto market‑microstructure fluency: perps funding mechanics, dated futures rolls, cross‑venue liquidity, margin models, ADL/clawback risks, and exchange operational quirks.
• Execution + data tooling: hands‑on Python for analysis and automation; comfort with exchange APIs/websockets/FIX; building dashboards/alerts for 24/7 monitoring.
• Operational discipline: reconciliations, NAV/PnL checks, custody/wallet operations, counterparty underwriting, incident management, and documentation.
• Communication & leadership: crisp writing, structured thinking, and the ability to drive decisions across risk, engineering, and operations.
• Comfort operating at the intersection of CeFi and DeFi: routing capital between centralized venues and onchain vaults, understanding the operational and risk implications of both.

Nice to Have

• Experience integrating staked ETH yield into basis construction (e.g., validator APY vs. futures basis) and managing associated liquidity/discount risks.
• Prior work designing or managing vault strategies on DeFi infra, including strategy specs, parameter tuning, and onchain risk monitoring.
• Prior work with tokenized funds or multi‑chain issuance registries.
• Relationships with regulated primes/custodians and a history of launching institutional‑grade strategies.

What We Offer

• A chance to push the frontier of onchain capital markets with real institutional partners and to scale delta-neutral strategies to over $1bn in managed assets.
• Competitive compensation including salary, equity, token, and carry.
• High‑ownership environment with direct impact on product roadmap and commercialization; both at the strategy and vault‑design layer.
• Remote first culture with bases in New York City, Miami, and Central Europe with opportunities to travel to team events and conferences.
• A culture that blends rigorous risk management with fast, thoughtful execution.

Ready to apply?

Please email your cover letter and CV to recruiting@grove.finance