Balyasny Asset Management is ramping up its data capabilities with a string of high-profile hires from rivals including Citadel and Morgan Stanley, as hedge funds increasingly compete for talent once dominated by tech giants and electronic trading firms, according to a report by eFinancial Careers.

The multi-strategy manager recently brought on Eric Ferreira, former head of databases at Citadel, as a database engineering manager based in Chicago. Ferreira, a former Amazon Web Services principal engineer and Redshift expert, joins Balyasny after six years overseeing more than 300 production databases at Citadel. His move comes amid Citadel's broader relocation from Chicago to Miami – a shift prompting other engineers, like Kubernetes specialist Javier Cardenas, to follow suit and join Balyasny.

In New York, Balyasny’s equities-focused unit Longaeva – led by ex-Point72 portfolio manager Peter Goodwin – has also been building out a data-heavy team. Public filings show the group hired a consumer data lead in January on a $225k base salary, believed to be Sandi Xu, a former quant researcher at Morgan Stanley and Anomaly Capital.

In a further sign of its investment in data infrastructure, Longaeva is set to onboard a head of data this month at a $300k salary – one of the highest H1B salaries Balyasny has ever reported. The firm has not disclosed the individual’s identity.