Head of DeFi

Our client is a specialist institutional asset manager operating at the intersection of traditional and on-chain finance. The firm issues fixed-coupon, exchange-traded notes that convert volatile DeFi yield into the steady, predictable profile of institutional fixed income, giving banks, endowments, foundations, and family offices exposure to on-chain returns without direct crypto exposure.

The firm is best understood as a blue-chip DeFi hedge fund built for a TradFi audience: rigorous credit risk scoring applied to on-chain markets, grounded in published academic research, and delivered through a regulated, securitised note structure (ISIN, exchange-tradeable) that institutional allocators already know how to buy.

The Role

We’re hiring a Head of DeFi to design, build, and run the firm’s DeFi yield strategy book. This is a founding-desk role: you will define the strategy mix, build the research and allocation process, and represent the strategy to the institutional investors who allocate to it. You’ll be paired with a junior hire, and together you’ll cover both research and capital allocation.

This isn’t a single-strategy mandate. The market has largely converged on delta-neutral, market-neutral yield, and we want the other side of that: a bundled, diversified portfolio of DeFi strategies spanning the full risk spectrum, from delta-neutral carry through to higher-conviction, alpha-generating positions. Think of it as building a private-banking-style diversified allocation, but constructed entirely from on-chain building blocks.

What you’ll own

• Design and run 3–4 core DeFi strategies spanning stablecoin lending, optimised/leveraged yield, on-chain bonds, and RWA (real-world asset) DeFi exposure.
• Build a bundled portfolio approach, combining delta-neutral and higher-risk, alpha-generating strategies, rather than defaulting to a single market-neutral book.
• Own capital allocation decisions as well as the underlying research; you’ll need to be comfortable doing both, not just one.
• Develop the firm’s RWA DeFi strategy as a priority growth area.
• Act as a credible, commercially-minded face of the strategy to TradFi investors, private banks, and institutional allocators evaluating on-chain products.
• Work with compliance and product teams to ensure strategies operate within the firm’s regulated, securitised note framework.
• Build out and mentor a junior team member as the desk scales.

What We’re Looking For:

Essential

• Genuine, hands-on experience in DeFi, not a TradFi background looking to learn on the job.
• A track record across DeFi yield strategies, ideally spanning both market-neutral and higher-conviction approaches.
• Commercially minded: comfortable in front of investors, able to sell a strategy and a thesis, not purely a back-office researcher.
• Able to combine research and allocation: we need someone who can do the analysis and then act on it.
• A builder’s mindset: motivated by the opportunity to construct something of their own, rather than execute someone else’s playbook.
• Strong cultural fit. We weight this as heavily as the CV: how you work matters as much as where you’ve worked.

Good to have

• Experience at a recognised digital asset manager or DeFi-native fund, particularly candidates ready to step out and build their own book.
• Exposure to RWA (real-world asset) protocols and strategy design.
• Prior experience navigating compliance and product structuring alongside portfolio management.

What we’re not looking for

• You do not need to be the most senior person in the market: we’re optimising for ownership, hunger, and cultural fit over pure seniority or pedigree.
• Pure quants with no allocation or client-facing instinct.
• Pure allocators/salespeople with no genuine DeFi research depth.