Retained Technical Strategy for Electronic Trading

We provide the architectural guardrails and strategic oversight required to protect capital and maximize P&L.

Eliminate Decision Latency. We operate as an independent architectural authority—bridging the gap between quantitative vision and engineering reality.

Schedule Strategy Session

30 min · Ariel Silahian

Book a Strategic Call

What we do?

Executive Technical Sovereignty

We partner with established electronic trading organizations to align trading infrastructure with commercial objectives.

We operate as a retained governance function, working alongside your existing engineering teams. This model ensures consistent, high-level architectural direction and strategic continuity, focusing on long-term stability rather than temporary operational capacity.

How we help

Strategic Architecture

Translating commercial objectives into a rigorous technology roadmap. We ensure every technical initiative aligns directly with P&L goals.

Eliminate the ‘Gap Risk’ between business goals and engineering reality.

Execution Quality & Microstructure

Leveraging proprietary forensic capabilities to diagnose invisible latency and slippage, translating network behavior into actionable intelligence.

Stop bleeding Alpha to invisible slippage and latency gray zones.

Resilience & Risk Strategy

Establishing ‘Zero-Failover’ protocols. We design the guardrails that allow your teams to deploy faster while maintaining institutional safety.

Deploy faster with the certainty that the platform will not break.

Platform & Vendor Strategy

Arbitrating ‘Build vs. Buy’ decisions and vendor strategy. We act as the independent authority to break internal political deadlocks.

End the internal political deadlocks that stall critical infrastructure upgrades.

Ready to get started? Explore our service tiers to find your fit.

Explore Retainer Tiers
One-Time Engagement
Looking for a one-time execution audit instead?
Our Microstructure Diagnostics service analyzes your execution logs through a proprietary engine and delivers quantified findings in 3-5 days. No retainer required.
Learn more →

How the Process Works

We guide executives through a proven four-stage process designed to deliver measurable outcomes and long-term strategic success.

01

Executive Strategy

Alignment on live decisions affecting P&L and Risk.

02

Architectural Review

Analysis of flows and blockers to prepare board-ready recommendations.

03

Decision Directives

Concise ‘Go/No-Go’ memos and roadmaps for immediate execution.

04

Strategic Intervention

Direct oversight during high-stakes launches or market events.

Pricing

Three ways to work together. One of them is a one-time audit with a start and a finish. The other two are ongoing, month to month.

One-time audit
Three weeks · Nothing recurring
Architecture Decision Assessment
Priced per engagement
One fixed fee
For firms about to spend real money on a build, a migration or a new venue, who want the decisions settled first.
How it works
  1. Your team walks me through the architecture.
  2. I audit it against your venue’s published rules and the plan you are funding.
  3. You get the full written assessment, plus two weeks afterward where you can ask me anything it raises.

Three meetings across the three weeks. Then it is yours to execute.

What is in the document
  • A summary a non-engineer can act on ?
  • The real limits your system has to live within ?
  • The decisions that commit money, in order ?
  • The choices that cannot be undone ?
  • What each option costs, and what undoing it costs ?
  • Whether to build it, buy it, or wait ?
  • What happens if nobody decides ?
  • What to do in the next thirty days ?

One document you can hand to whoever approves the money: what you spend, in what order, and which choices can never be taken back.

Read a full sample assessment

A complete one, written for a situation like yours. Nine questions, and it arrives by email.

or book a call instead
Ongoing · Written
Retained Counsel
$5K / month
Month to month, or $50K for the year
For firms who want someone senior to ask before an architectural decision gets made.
How it works
  1. You email me the decision.
  2. I research it against what you have built.
  3. A written recommendation comes back inside 72 hours.

A standing arrangement, not a fee per question. A quiet month costs the same as a busy one.

What you get
  • A researched answer, not a snap opinion ?
  • Any decision checked against what you have built ?
  • Vendor claims tested against their own documentation ?
  • A recommendation, not a survey of options ?
  • Independent, because I am not the one building it ?

A written record of why each decision was made, that holds up when an investor, a partner or a regulator asks who reviewed it.

Book a call
Embedded · Monthly retainer
Principal Architect
$30K / month
Monthly retainer. No minimum term.
For firms that need the architectural decisions owned from inside the room, month after month.
How it works
  1. I hold the architectural authority for as long as you retain it.
  2. Decisions get made, defended and written down, as they arrive.
  3. The risk on each one is owned, not left with your team.

Not hours, and not a set number of meetings. You are retaining the person who carries the technical decision.

What you get

Held continuously, for as long as the retainer runs.

  • The architecture owned, the roadmap enforced ?
  • Build-versus-buy settled, spending held to the P&L ?
  • Latency found, failover designed, incidents reviewed ?
  • Team structure, hiring, and who owns which risk ?
  • Direct oversight on migrations and launches ?

An architecture that holds as the business changes, and a standing record of who carried which risk.

Book a call

Choosing between the two ongoing ones: if you want written answers on decisions as they come up, that is Retained Counsel. If you want someone in the room while the work happens, that is Principal Architect.

Read a full sample assessment

Pick the situation closest to yours and I will send you the full sample assessment written for it: the same depth and length the engagement delivers. Nine short questions, about two minutes, and no call unless you ask for one.

This decides which assessment you get sent.
Optional. Three lines is plenty.
Optional.

I send it over personally, usually within a few hours, with a link to book a call if you want one.

Ariel Silahian
Ariel Silahian
Founder, HFT Advisory

About

After 20 years building high-frequency trading platforms for Tier-1 banks and hedge funds, I noticed a recurring pattern of failure. It was not that these firms lacked brilliant engineers. It was that they lacked Structural Governance—the architectural authority to align engineering decisions with commercial reality. I founded HFT Advisory to solve this specific gap.

Founder: VisualHFT — The industry standard for microstructure analytics. (1K+ GitHub Stars)
Author: “C++ High Performance for Financial Systems” (Packt)
Experience: 20+ years architecting across Buy Side and Sell Side (NY, Miami, London, HK)

Expertise

Capital Markets | Hedge Funds | Quantitative Trading Funds | Electronic Trading Desks | Proprietary Trading | Investment Banks | Asset Management

Industries

  • Market Makers
  • Capital Markets
  • Hedge Funds
  • Trading Desks
  • Liquidity Providers
  • Cryptocurrency Exchanges
  • Electronic Trading

Electronic Trading

  • High-Frequency Trading
  • Low-Latency Architecture
  • Market Microstructure
  • Execution Quality Analysis
  • Latency Arbitrage Defense

Market Coverage

  • Futures & Commodities
  • Digital Assets / Crypto
  • CFDs
  • FX
  • Equities
  • Fixed Income
  • Derivatives / Options

Strategic Advisory

  • Technology Strategy
  • Resilience Engineering
  • Capital Efficiency
  • Vendor Arbitration
  • Technical Roadmap

Optimizations

  • OMS
  • SOR
  • Zero-Failover Protocols
  • Slippage Mitigation
  • Infrastructure Modernization

Cutting Edge Tech

  • Advanced Analytics
  • Microstructure Forensics
  • Deterministic Replay
  • High-Performance Computing

Case Studies

Prop Trading
Prop Trading

Proprietary Trading Firm Builds High-Frequency Trading System with our Guidance

Read Case Study →
Investment Bank
Investment Bank

Global Investment Bank Modernizes Cross-Region Risk Management System

Read Case Study →
Risk Management
Risk Management

Renowned Investment Bank Enhances Risk Management System (RMS)

Read Case Study →
Asset Management
Asset Management

Global Asset Manager Strengthens Best Execution and Control Around OMS Platform

Read Case Study →
HFT Startup
HFT Startup

HFT Startup Transforms Operations with Updated Systems

Read Case Study →
Hedge Fund
Hedge Fund

Hedge Fund Startup Sets Up High-Frequency Trading Electronic Platform

Read Case Study →
Case Study

Schedule Your Strategy Discovery Call

Discuss how we can accelerate your decisions, reduce risks, and elevate trading performance

Frequently Asked Questions

No. We operate alongside your existing engineering teams as an independent governance function. Our role is to provide architectural direction and strategic oversight, not to replace headcount.
This service is designed for CTOs, Heads of Trading, and senior technical leaders at established electronic trading firms ($500M+ AUM) who face strategic infrastructure decisions and need independent, expert guidance.
We begin with an Executive Strategy session to understand your current blockers and P&L constraints. We then provide Architectural Review and Decision Directives sustained through the outcome, with Strategic Intervention for high-stakes events.
Success is measured by quantifiable outcomes: latency reduction, slippage improvement, deployment velocity, and risk incident reduction. We establish baseline metrics at engagement start and track improvement against the architectural outcome.
This is its own category — Retained Technical Governance. Architectural authority and decision frameworks for the outcomes that commit capital. The model sits closer to strategic board advisory than to any embedded operational role.
Yes. The Principal Architect tier includes Team Structure & Hiring Design. We help define roles, skill profiles, and organizational structure needed for your trading infrastructure goals.
Selectively. Our model is optimized for firms with existing trading operations. For early-stage ventures, we recommend starting with a Strategy Discovery Call to assess fit. We have helped HFT startups in their build phase when there is a clear path to institutional scale.
We provide the architectural direction and governance framework for building trading platforms. We do not build software ourselves. Our role is to ensure the platform your team builds is architecturally sound, low-latency by design, and aligned with your commercial objectives.
The cost varies significantly. A basic co-location setup starts at $200K–$500K annually. A full institutional-grade HFT infrastructure can exceed $2M–$5M in initial investment. Our Strategic Architecture service helps you design the right-sized solution and avoid costly over-engineering.

Latest Insights

In-depth analysis of HFT architecture, market microstructure, and trading infrastructure from the field.

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