A Q&A with Dennis Pilsworth, chief technology officer at Man Group's AHL fund

AHL, the managed futures division of hedge fund firm Man Group, is expanding its technology team and is looking to recruit for around 30 positions.

It's just hired Dr Wayne Glanfield - a PhD with a background in building Formula One high performance computing facilities. Clearly, it doesn't look for conventional techies for its team, so what does it take to secure a position at AHL?

We spoke to its chief technology officer Dennis Pilsworth (above) about the firms hiring plans and what it looks for in its IT recruits.

You've said that AHL has plans to recruit for a number of technology positions this year. What roles are likely to be created and what are the drivers for this?

AHL's core business is based on automated trading strategies. The roles revolve around designing, building and optimising those strategies. AHL is investing heavily in this capability, and technology is a key aspect from research through to trade execution. Roles exist from designing distributed data cluster computing (designing and distributing data around a large group of computers) through to designing systems that generate trading signals and electronic trade execution development.

What skills and attributes do you look for in your technology recruits?

Strong computer science background, an understanding of algorithms, an interest in maths and finance. A PhD or other post-graduate qualification can help, but isn't necessary.

What do you see as the main technology challenges for managed futures firms currently, and going forward?

We have a very active research program - we need to balance the need to implement and deploy new strategies with the operational responsibilities of existing ones. Going forward, the research team will have a growing appetite for processing power and data. We're building our capacity to help them implement their new research.

What do you think are the most attractive (or necessary) areas of investment in technology?

Building a talented team always comes top of my list; a diverse group of people who are excited about our business and technology give us a great chance of being successful. Aside from that, we are investing heavily in our research computing platform, our core signals and portfolio optimisation approaches and our electronic execution technology.

You've just recruited Wayne Glanfield who previously ran Renault's Formula One high performance computing facilities. Do you have any other team members with an unconventional background?

Team members include ex-lawyers, bio-informaticians and even some with a classics background - all drawn from 15 different countries.

What made Wayne an appealing candidate?

Wayne's background helping a Formula One team perform large scale computational fluid dynamics research (looking at aerodynamics - studying how liquid materials flow over surfaces) maps very closely onto the requirements we have in deploying own statistical research cluster for analysing price trends in financial markets.