Citadel data scientist resurfaces as head of data science at Jupiter Asset Management

If you're a quantitative analyst who's looking for an opportunity of reinventing yourself as something in data science, you might want to adopt Samuel Livingstone as your role model. Livingstone was once a lowly quant analyst. Now he's head of data science at Jupiter Asset Management (as of this month.)

Livingstone's big new role follows a four month period of gardening leave after he left Citadel and served out one of the hedge fund's non-competes. He spent around two years at Citadel, working as a data scientist on the fund's global equities desk. Prior to that he worked for Schroders and Towers Watson as an investment analyst after beginning his career as a sales trader at IG Group in 2010.

Livingstone's metamorphosis from sales trader to quant analyst to data scientist should be of particular interest to anyone who aspires to work in data science but who doesn't have a PhD in a mathematical area and didn't attend a top university for a bachelor's course. Livingstone graduated from the UK's University of the West of England with a first degree in economics and business and went on to study a masters in economics, accounting and finance at the University of Bristol. In both cases, he finished within the top one or two per cent of his graduating class.

Jupiter's appointment of a new head of data science comes as fund managers have doubled their spending on digital information sets in two years, leading to explosive demand for data scientists. Spending is expected to increase another 60% in the next two years, with hiring expected to rise along with it.

Schroders (Livingstone's former employer) is widely considered one of the most advanced of the traditional asset managers when it comes to data science. The fund has had a data insights team since 2015.

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