Trading & Commercial
Traders and desk heads, optimisation managers, heads of trading, and commercial directors across physical and derivatives products.
Rhumbl Group provides commodity trading recruitment in Singapore for the desks that drive a trading business and the specialist functions that enable them. We are an executive search and recruitment advisory focused on senior and business-critical hires, and we bring something unusual to it: our partners have led hiring from inside a global energy and commodity trading organisation. We know how a front office really runs, because we have run hiring for one.
Who we work with
We partner with trading houses, the trading arms of energy majors, and producers and consumers with commercial desks in Singapore and across the region. Our work is senior and business-critical: the hires where capital, governance and performance are tightly linked, and where a wrong appointment carries real commercial risk.
That usually means desk heads and commercial leadership, but just as often it means the specialist roles a trading business cannot function without: the risk manager who keeps the book safe, the operator who turns a trade into a delivered cargo, the technologist who keeps the ETRM platform running.
Coverage
We cover the trading floor the way it is actually organised, the desks, and the functions that enable them.
Traders and desk heads, optimisation managers, heads of trading, and commercial directors across physical and derivatives products.
Fundamental and market analysts, supply and demand modellers, quantitative and research analysts, heads of analytics, and meteorologists, the people who give a desk a market view it can trade on.
Originators, structurers, and commercial leaders who build the supply, offtake and counterparty deals that feed the book.
Trade and structured finance, treasury, financial control and finance leadership. Everything that funds and settles physical and traded flow.
Trading and commercial legal counsel, compliance officers, and market, credit and operational risk professionals. These control functions keep a trading business in the market.
Operations, scheduling and supply, logistics and shipping, the operational backbone of every delivered trade.
ETRM and CTRM specialists across Endur, Allegro, RightAngle, Aspect and Molecule; shipping systems; quantitative and AI developers; and the technology leadership a modern trading floor depends on.
The difference
Most search firms know the market from the outside. We have sat on your side of the table.
Matt Boardman, our Managing Director, spent his recent career at bp managing hiring for the group’s trading, commercial and corporate leadership teams. That experience shapes how we work: we understand the pressures behind a trading hire, market volatility, regulatory scrutiny, business performance, and decisions that cannot wait, because we have hired under them ourselves.
It also means we advise honestly. If the brief needs reshaping, or the market will not deliver what a role description asks for, we say so early, the way an internal talent lead would.
Process
Every search follows the Rhumbl Method: a deliberate line from brief to hire, led by a partner throughout.
Brief. We work with you to define the role, the market reality, and what success looks like.
Mapping. A transparent, tech-optimised mapping of the talent market, with visibility at every step.
Shortlist. Assessed candidates, presented with honest advice rather than a sales pitch.
Offer. Support through negotiation in a market where counter-offers are the norm.
Onboarding. We stay engaged through to landing, with bench-strength thinking beyond the immediate hire.
The partner who wins the work does the work. No hand-offs.
Where we work
Rhumbl Group is based in Singapore, the hub of Asian commodity trading, and we run mandates across APAC, the Middle East and beyond. Being here matters: compensation expectations, regulatory context and candidate movement in this market are local knowledge, not a report you can buy.
Questions
Senior and business-critical roles across the full trading organisation: traders and desk heads, analytics, origination, finance and treasury, legal, compliance and risk, cargo and trading operations, and trading technology including ETRM specialists.
Our work is senior-level search, typically retained. Every mandate is partner-led from brief to onboarding, the same person you brief runs the search.
It depends on the role’s seniority and scarcity, but expect a mapped market and an assessed shortlist within weeks, not months. We agree timelines at the brief stage and report progress transparently throughout.
Yes. Whether you are actively moving or simply weighing your options, we welcome the conversation and treat it in confidence. Get in touch or connect with us on LinkedIn.
Singapore is our base, and our mandates span APAC, the Middle East and international markets, wherever our clients’ trading businesses operate.
If you are hiring for a trading desk or the functions behind it, or considering your own next move, we would be glad to hear from you.
Last updated: July 2026