World-class experts in quantitative finance, artificial intelligence, blockchain engineering, regulatory compliance, and community development — united by a common mission to open institutional-grade technology to the world.
Octagon's founding team and leadership didn't come from crypto-native startups with paper credentials in decentralized finance. They came from the institutions — Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, the IMF, DeepMind, Coinbase, the SEC, Bridgewater Associates. They built the trading desks, wrote the compliance frameworks, designed the security architectures, and trained the AI models that power institutional finance from the inside.
When they say Octagon's technology is institutional-grade, they know exactly what institutional-grade means — because they built institutional systems. And when they say they're committed to making that technology accessible to everyone, it comes from having personally seen how profoundly those tools have been kept out of reach for everyday investors around the world.
Eight leaders across technology, finance, compliance, operations, security, and community — each bringing deep domain expertise and a shared commitment to the Octagon mission.
Marcus spent 12 years as a quantitative analyst and portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs and Renaissance Technologies before co-founding Octagon. His work in algorithmic trading and statistical arbitrage across equity and derivatives markets gave him a front-row seat to the tools that generate consistent institutional returns — and a growing conviction that those tools should be available to everyone, not just the firms with eight-figure infrastructure budgets. At Octagon, Marcus leads overall strategy, investor relations, regulatory engagement, and executive decision-making. He is also the primary architect of Octagon's long-term vision: a global, open-access platform for algorithmic arbitrage that serves members in every country on earth.
Dr. Okonkwo holds a PhD in Computational Mathematics from MIT, where her doctoral research focused on variational quantum algorithms applied to combinatorial optimisation problems. After completing her doctorate, she spent three years at IBM's quantum computing division before shifting her focus to financial market applications. Her work on quantum-inspired pattern recognition — specifically the application of quantum annealing heuristics to real-time order book analysis — forms the technical backbone of Octagon's arbitrage engine. As CTO, Aisha leads all engineering and research teams, sets the technical roadmap, and personally oversees the architecture of every major system upgrade.
Viktor brings 15 years of systematic trading experience, including senior quant roles at Deutsche Bank's structured products desk and Bridgewater Associates, where he worked on risk parity strategy modelling. His expertise spans market microstructure analysis, derivatives pricing, statistical factor models, and cross-exchange execution optimisation. At Octagon, Viktor is responsible for all strategy development, risk model design, and the framework that governs how and when the engine executes trades. He also chairs the internal risk committee that sets drawdown limits, position size caps, and exchange exposure thresholds for the platform.
Sophia spent eight years as regulatory counsel, first at Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) and then at the SEC's Office of International Affairs. She was among the earliest financial regulators to develop expertise in cryptocurrency asset classification, exchange licensing frameworks, and cross-border digital asset compliance. She joined Octagon in 2022 to build the company's legal infrastructure from scratch — designing the compliance programme, member verification processes, AML frameworks, and regulatory engagement strategy across all 120+ jurisdictions where the platform operates. Her work ensures Octagon remains on the right side of an evolving and complex global regulatory landscape.
James is a serial fintech entrepreneur who built and sold two successful payments startups before joining Octagon. His first company, a cross-border remittance platform focused on the West African corridor, was acquired by a European fintech in 2019. His second, a B2B foreign exchange solution for SMEs, was acquired in 2021. James brings operational rigour, partnership-building expertise, and a deep personal investment in making financial technology work for African markets and the broader developing world. At Octagon, he oversees global operations, exchange partnerships, member onboarding pipelines, support infrastructure, and the company's expansion into new markets.
Dr. Volkov spent four years as a researcher at DeepMind, where she worked on multi-agent reinforcement learning systems for resource allocation problems. Her published research on applying policy gradient methods to non-stationary environments translates directly to the challenge of training trading algorithms in real financial markets — environments that are noisy, non-stationary, adversarial, and subject to regime changes. She joined Octagon in 2023 to lead the machine learning team and has since overseen the development of the platform's third and fourth generation prediction and execution models. Her team of six ML engineers continuously trains, evaluates, and deploys new model versions to improve Octagon's edge in live markets.
Raj spent six years as a senior cybersecurity engineer at Coinbase, where he led the security team responsible for protecting the platform's hot and cold wallet infrastructure during a period when the exchange scaled from 10 million to 100 million users. He has deep expertise in cryptographic key management, hardware security modules (HSMs), multi-signature wallet architecture, penetration testing methodology, and incident response. At Octagon, Raj oversees all infrastructure security, physical and digital asset protection, third-party security audit programmes, and the company's bug bounty programme. He conducts annual red team exercises and is responsible for the policy that keeps 95%+ of member funds in offline cold storage at all times.
Amara is a community builder and educator who spent seven years growing crypto communities, including two that exceeded 100,000 active members before she joined Octagon. She is a published author on financial literacy for underserved communities and has delivered workshops on cryptocurrency fundamentals to audiences across West Africa, Southeast Asia, and the UK. At Octagon, Amara leads the global community programme, the education academy, the ambassador and referral network, and the member success team. She personally oversees the development of educational content — from beginner guides to advanced arbitrage strategy courses — and chairs the community governance working group that allows members to have a voice in platform development.
Octagon's advisory board brings together senior policymakers, technologists, and entrepreneurs who provide strategic counsel on the platform's long-term direction, regulatory positioning, and technical roadmap.
Prof. Kwan served as Chief Economist at the IMF for nine years, where he led global macro research and advised finance ministries across 40 countries. He joined Octagon's advisory board in 2023 and provides guidance on macroeconomic risk, sovereign market exposure, and the platform's long-term positioning in the global financial system.
Lisa has spent 22 years in applied cryptography and distributed systems, including foundational work on IPFS and Filecoin at Protocol Labs. She advises Octagon on its blockchain integration architecture, smart contract security, and the long-term technical roadmap for the platform's multi-chain infrastructure.
Roberto has founded and scaled three financial technology companies across Latin America and Europe, with two successful exits to public market acquirers. His expertise in product-market fit, go-to-market execution, and emerging market fintech strategy guides Octagon's expansion planning and product development priorities.
Dr. Mehta led the Bank of England's Digital Assets Research Unit from 2019 to 2023, producing some of the most cited regulatory research on CBDC design and stablecoin oversight. Her perspective helps Octagon navigate the regulatory frontier and position the company as a constructive participant in the evolution of digital asset policy.
Octagon is a remote-first company with team members in 12 countries. We don't believe geography should limit who can contribute to building the future of finance — and we practise that belief internally with the same conviction we apply externally to our platform's global accessibility.
We are a high-standards team that moves fast and expects deep ownership. Every person at Octagon is given significant responsibility and trusted to exercise independent judgment. We hire adults and treat them like adults — with full context, clear goals, and the autonomy to achieve those goals without unnecessary process or approval chains.
We are also a team that genuinely cares about the mission. The people who work here do so not just because they could work anywhere — but because Octagon is working on something worth dedicating their careers to. Building equitable financial technology. Writing real, working AI for real, live markets. Protecting the savings of 520,100 members who trust us with their financial futures. That is a meaningful place to spend your professional energy.
We are always looking for exceptional people in quantitative research, AI engineering, blockchain development, compliance, and community leadership. If the Octagon mission resonates with you and you bring genuine depth in your field, we want to hear from you.