Commodities trading has long been underserved when it comes to technology and technical talent.
Kulwant Bhatia, a tech leader with over 15 years of experience in commodities, has worked across FX, equities and commodities. He has seen the contrast firsthand between commodities and other asset classes. “Most of the tech people that I’ve known over the years would be more attracted to banks because they were the biggest consumers of technology. And it’s a self-fulfilling cycle. So the more they hire, the more that attracts people.”
That cycle helped equities and FX become magnets for technologists. These markets are known for scale, automation and advanced tooling. As banks invested heavily in tech, engineers, quants, and data scientists followed.
Commodities, by contrast, have had a different talent story. “Typically, someone enters the industry because they have some kind of connection,” Kulwant explains. “They’d have, say, a chemical engineering background and that brought them into the commodities world.”
Add to this the fact that commodities is rarely covered in schools, barely featured in university courses, and almost absent from mainstream media. There are probably five Big Short or Wall Street films for every Trading Places. While equity traders and hedge funds star in popular culture, few people outside the sector know what a power trader does or that emissions, shipping, and crop data are part of trading strategies.
Without visibility, there has been no strong pipeline into the sector. And without a consistent influx of technologists, internal momentum has been slower. “You haven’t had that feedback loop within the more sort of technical people,” says Kulwant.
But things are changing. The commodities industry has come a long way, and more firms are moving away from legacy systems. “There’s definitely open-mindedness around modernisation,” he notes. “Commodities trading firms have seen what LLMs can do, they’ve seen Copilot. Everyone is exposed to AI now. And everyone wants to advance and be modern.”
That shift is opening new doors. As the sector digitises and embraces automation, the opportunity for technologists is growing. And naturally, more people will be drawn in.
So, where are all the technologists in commodities?
They are here. Part of our community. And we are excited to see more join as people realise that solving some of the most critical challenges facing us, from grid stability to supply chain transparency to energy transition, requires innovation in this space. It is time the next generation saw commodities not just as an option, but as one of the most exciting asset classes to build in.
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