Goldman Sachs loses top quant trader to Citadel after just six months

A top London-based quant trader quit Goldman Sach after just six months for Citadel.

Vivek Upadhyay, a senior quant trader and briefly an executive director at Goldman Sachs, joined the Chicago-based hedge fund's London office earlier this month.

A computer science graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Upadhyay began his career in equity derivatives structuring at UBS in 2008. He left the Swiss bank for a quant trading role at New York-headquartered high speed trading firm Tower Research Capital in 2012 and then moved to Goldman last September. Now he's moved on again.

During his brief Goldman interlude,  Upadhyay worked on the bank's 'securities execution services.' As such, he was presumably involved in Goldman's attempts to increase the efficiency of its electronic trading platforms. Tower Research describes itself as having, some of the ' fastest, most intelligent computer systems' in the world.

Citadel clearly thought Upadhyay's skills were of interest. His arrival at the hedge fund comes after a prolonged buildout of the Citadel's quant team. It comes at a time when investment banks and hedge funds are fighting over quants, throwing salaries of well over six-figures at even entry-level engineers and data scientists. 

At Citadel, Upadhyay will be a quantitative researcher, suggesting that he may be moving into more of an investment-focused role than at Goldman.

Upadhyay isn't Citadel's only recent Goldman hire. The fund also recruited Gilberto Marcheggiano, the former head of Cross Macro Investments at Goldman Sachs Asset Management in London. Marcheggiano joined Citadel this month as a macro portfolio manager. 

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