Head of Risk

About Keyrock

Since 2017, Keyrock has been a change-maker in digital assets. We're a global, remote-first team of 200+ people across 40+ nationalities, with hubs in Brussels, London, Paris and New York.

We provide liquidity across 80+ centralized and decentralized exchanges - a position cemented by our Series C, led by SC Ventures. Today we run a full spectrum of capital markets businesses across centralized and on-chain venues: market making, high-frequency trading, options, OTC, DeFi trading desks, advisory, and asset management.

We're building toward the agentic investment banking capabilities for the era of digital finance. A proprietary agentic layer runs the mechanics of the market, so our people can focus on the work code cannot do: the deal, the relationship, and the judgement.

We're not just envisioning the future of finance - we're building it.

What we are looking for

We are seeking a Head of Risk to own and develop the Firm’s risk function end-to-end. This is a senior leadership role with direct accountability for the design, implementation and enforcement of a Firm-wide risk framework across all activities.

The role requires strong quantitative risk expertise and the ability to apply rigorous methodologies to complex, real-time markets across both traditional finance and digital assets. The successful candidate will co-design the firm’s risk architecture with the COO and CIO, covering data, analytics and real-time risk aggregation.

You will have full oversight of risk across trading (spot and derivatives), treasury and investments, including exposures across CeFi and DeFi environments. This includes defining risk appetite, implementing advanced risk metrics and ensuring disciplined risk-taking across the organization.

We are looking for a leader who sets the standard, challenges the business and enforces a strong risk culture, while enabling the firm to scale.

Role description

Quantitative Risk Framework: Develop and maintain a quantitative risk framework grounded in modern risk theory (e.g. market, credit, liquidity and systemic risk modelling), leveraging concepts such as tail risk, extreme value theory, dependence structures and stress testing

Firm-wide Risk System Architecture: Co-design and implement the Firm-wide risk management system in close collaboration with the COO and CIO, including data architecture, risk aggregation layers, real-time monitoring capabilities and reporting infrastructure across all business lines.

Cross-Asset & Cross-Infrastructure Risk Integration: Build an integrated risk view across centralized and decentralized venues, covering exchange risk, counterparty risk, smart contract risk, collateral efficiency and liquidity fragmentation.

Advanced Risk Modelling & Metrics: Define and implement advanced risk metrics (VaR, Expected Shortfall, stress scenarios, liquidity-adjusted risk, concentration risk) and ensure their consistent application across trading, treasury and investment activities.

Is plus: TradFi Crypto Risk Translation: Translate traditional financial risk methodologies into crypto-native environments, adapting models to account for 24/7 markets, fragmented liquidity, funding dynamics, on-chain transparency and new failure modes (e.g. oracle risk, protocol risk).

Background and Experience

Quantitative Risk Expertise: Strong foundation in quantitative risk management, including hands-on experience with market risk, credit risk and liquidity risk modelling, ideally aligned with frameworks such as those presented in Quantitative Risk Management (McNeil, Frey, Embrechts) .

Modelling & Analytical Skills: Demonstrated ability to design and implement risk models, including tail risk estimation, scenario analysis, stress testing frameworks and dependence modelling across asset classes.

System Design & Cross-Functional Leadership: Proven experience in designing or co-designing firm-wide risk systems, working closely with technology (CIO) and operations (COO) to translate risk requirements into scalable infrastructure.

TradFi + Crypto Hybrid Experience: Experience operating at the intersection of traditional financial markets and digital assets (CeFi and/or DeFi), with a strong understanding of differences in market structure, risk transmission and infrastructure.

Crypto-Specific Risk Understanding: Practical knowledge of crypto-specific risks, including exchange/custodian risk, smart contract risk, protocol risk, funding/basis dynamics and collateral management in both centralized and decentralized environments.

Competences and personality

• Strong drive and proactivity to continuously strengthen the risk management in a fast-growing financial institution
• The candidate reports to the COO but this is not a reporting role, but a quantitative risk management system-building role.

Our recruitment philosophy

We look for self-aware candidates who bring both the core skills required for the role and a deep alignment with our performance …