Graduate Trader

Graduate Trader

Onyx Capital Group Limited · London, United Kingdom · Full-time · Posted 2025-12-16

Workplace: on_site

Description

We need traders to power our growth. We know how to train. We need good clay.

Onyx is the largest market maker in oil swaps, trading more than $4.8 trillion in notional a year across 800+ contracts, with live pricing 22 hours a day, five days a week. Our traders are the engine of the group. This is more than trading: it is market infrastructure in one of the most important industries in the world.

We are recruiting junior traders in OTC derivatives market making. Every hedge needs someone on the other side. The request reaches the desk by voice or on screen, and the market maker prices it, takes it and runs the risk. You quote a price to buy and a price to sell, all day, across crude, fuel oil, gasoil, gasoline, naphtha and NGLs: contracts linked like a web of spreads. Every trade you take sits on your book. You manage it.

Almost nobody outside a market-making desk has this skill. So we built the only programme that teaches it.

Trained in London. Placed anywhere in the world.

You are paid from day one: £50K during the four-week bootcamp, £65K in continuation, £90K on the desk from month four as a Trader Analyst. Once you’ve completed our one-month Desk Ready course, we’ll offer you a role in one of our offices: London, New York, Houston, Zug, Singapore, or Axis in Dubai.

From there the pathway is Junior Trader (£125K), Trader (£150K), Senior Trader (£200K+) and Head of Desk. Each step has a clear test, and hitting the milestones earns you the conversation about promotion, not the promotion itself. Of the 80 traders we have hired through the programme, 44 have reached senior trader, in a median of 2.5 years. Average total compensation per trader, all levels, over the last six years: £1.48m.

Your first months on the desk.

Own the desk’s daily operations end to end and make them better: trade entry, reconciliation, futures and OTC execution support. Build your market knowledge through structured learning, regular market views and shadow trading. Work with the traders on research and new strategies. You finish by presenting the value you’ve added.

Development is run in-house by the trading management team, onsite alongside the desks: on-desk coaching every day, 1-to-1 and group coaching every week, a monthly review of results and mindset, and defined KPIs for your stage through the Onyx Review System.

Four intakes in 2027. Eight places each.

Winter starts February (applications close 15 January). Spring starts April (close 15 March). Summer starts 12 July (close 31 May). Autumn starts 11 October (close 31 August). Choose your intake on the application form.

How selection works. AEJ, our specialist recruitment partner, reads every application and replies within 10 working days. Round 1 is a phone interview with AEJ. Round 2 is in person at AEJ. Round 3 is our assessment centre: one long day at our London office, starting early — timed number tests that repeat and get harder, trading games, a Flux-style simulator, a group task and a presentation. A decision follows within 5–15 working days, with a feedback pack and your scores, whatever the outcome.

For ten years we have received 5,000 to 10,000 applications a year, and around 8 people a year have made it through. We are now growing the programme to 32 places a year, so we only take people we can give that time to. You must have the right to work in the UK for the training period.

Requirements

You can’t prove you can trade before you are a trader. So we don’t ask you to.

You don’t need trading experience, and you don’t need to be sure you want to be a trader. We assess 13 characteristics, refined over ten years, each scored from 1 to 10 against written definitions. 80% of the score is behavioural and 20% is competency. Trading experience and jargon are not scored.

What we test:

• Managing yourself - sustained attention, integrity and discipline, composure and resilience, suited to a screen all day, handling repetition.
• Responding to training - numeric speed and accuracy, trading judgment, learns from feedback, clear communication.
• Relentless desire to achieve - drive and self-direction, competitive, determined, assertive.

Benefits

• Base salary from the first day of training: £50K bootcamp, £65K continuation, £90K on the desk.
• Placement in one of six global offices after Desk Ready.
• Performance psychology, psychometric coaching and daily on-desk coaching from senior traders.

Apply

Apply at Onyx Capital Group Limited

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