Citadel has just hired Bridgewater's head of fixed income trade execution in New York

Like most hedge funds, Citadel has been making a push into the quant space. It's re-hired James Yeh to lead its global quantitative strategies business, it's taken on senior UBS quant (and maths genius) Paul Jefferys and has been scouring university campuses to uncover the best undiscovered quant talent.

Now, it's turned to Bridgewater for a key big data role. Tom Zychinski, the former head of fixed income trade execution at Bridgewater Associates, has just joined Citadel as head of portfolio analytics and monitoring within its equity quantitative research function in New York.

Ray Dalio, chairman and chief investment officer at Bridgewater, said previously that 25% of people hired by the firm don't last 18 months and then after that "a lot of people who wouldn't want to work anywhere else". Zychinski leaves Bridgewater after 12 years, having joined in 2005 after graduating from Princeton with a degree in electrical engineering.

Zychinski joins an expansionary part of Citadel's business. L.J. Brock, chief people officer at the hedge fund, told us previously that the key focuses for Citadel's recruitment this year were in "Equities and Quantitative Strategies". Like most hedge funds, it faces a battle getting the best quants to join. The WSJ suggested previously that hedge funds were rolling out the red carpet to get quantitative employees to both join and stick around. Citadel was reportedly gifting its quants with tickets for Chicago and New York.

Citadel declined to comment.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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