An independent practice for capital markets & the firms that serve them.

Why Signal & Craft exists

Capital markets firms increasingly need to make decisions that span four disciplines at once. A new quantitative team is a hiring problem, a technology problem, a data problem and an AI question, all at the same time. Most advisers work in only one of those lanes, and the seams between them are where projects tend to fail.

Signal & Craft was built to work across all four. The same person who can interview a senior portfolio can also tell you whether the data they will need is worth licensing, whether the AI tool a vendor is pitching will pay for itself, and whether the technology stack the team has inherited is adequate.

The point is not to be everything to everyone. The point is that, for capital markets firms and the companies that sell into them, these four conversations belong together, as one interdisciplinary approach.

Sam Livingstone

Founder & Managing Director

Sam has held a number of senior buy-side roles, most recently as Head of Quantitative Strategies and Risk at one of Europe's largest sustainability-focused private equity firms, and Head of Data Science and Data Engineering at a large UK asset manager where he was brought in to build the team from scratch. The resulting award-winning team was embedded directly with the investment and trading desks, working as an integrated part of the research process rather than as a separate function.

Earlier in his career, Sam worked at Citadel as one of the first data science hires in Global Equities, where his role was to use data and technology to quantify the fundamental investment process, including the application of alternative data to build alpha signals.

At Schroders, Sam was a quant researcher on the Quantitative Equity Products (QEP) investment desk, where he co-managed over $30bn across a range of quantamental strategies, including the first quantitative ESG fund in Europe, which he built from scratch.

Other roles have included trading and quantitative analysis positions across a range of organisations, alongside consulting work with UBS, Nomura, and BNP Paribas.

He is also the founder of Eco AI, a scientific and technical start-up focused on sustainable machine learning for ESG investing, developed in collaboration with University College London (UCL). Sam writes and speaks regularly on AI and quantitative investment in both academic and industry settings, and sits on the advisory board or committee of several, including Quant Strats.

He holds a first-class honours degree in Economics & Business, and a Master of Science in Economics, Accounting & Finance (Distinction), from the University of Bristol. Sam is a CFA charterholder and a PhD researcher in the Department of Computer Science at UCL.

Working together

Most engagements begin with a short call to scope the question and confirm fit. If it looks like we can work together, we will sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement. From there, we will do a deep dive to see the best way to engage. For some, this means a monthly retainer, for others it is project based, and for others it can be work done on an hourly rate basis. We are happy to start small and build the relationship over time. We look for meaningful and high quality partnerships, not a series of once and dones.

For new enquiries and introductions, please get in touch.