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Paterson Consulting

Low-latency trading infrastructure, sourced and verified.

Carrier-side solutions engineering, trading-firm connectivity and principal trading experience — in one advisor. Route design, vendor sourcing and feasibility work for firms where microseconds are P&L.

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01The position

Most latency advice comes from one side of the table. Carriers sell you their route. Resellers mark up someone else's. Consultants who have never run risk optimise for the wrong variable.

I have built and sold these routes as a carrier solutions engineer, specified and bought them for trading firms and traded my own capital over infrastructure I chose. Paterson Consulting exists to put that full-stack view on your side of the negotiation.

02Services

Route design & latency budgets

Fibre, microwave, HF/RF and hybrid corridors, engineered against a stated latency target and failure model.

Vendor sourcing & negotiation

Direct carrier pricing benchmarked against reseller quotes; RFP design, term-sheet and SLA review.

Feasibility & lead-lag studies

Pre-registered methodology and kill criteria before capital is committed to a corridor.

Resilience architecture

Dark-fibre backstops, auto-failover design and MTTR-aware vendor selection.

Spectrum & regulatory sweeps

Licence-database analysis (FCC ULS and national equivalents) to map who is actually on a corridor.

Commissioning & acceptance

Build oversight, acceptance testing and handover to in-house teams.

03Selected work (anonymised)

Chicago → Tokyo, three tiers

For an Asia-Pacific proprietary trading firm, designed and negotiated a three-tier intercontinental architecture: an HF-trigger layer for the fastest signals, a consortium microwave/RF path for order flow and a fibre VPRN backstop — replacing public-internet transport end to end. Scoped the accompanying dark-fibre failover, a US metro wireless decision framework and a CME→B3 São Paulo feasibility study with pre-registered kill criteria. The engagement concluded by design: the capability was handed over to a full-time in-house hire — which was the goal from day one.

LON–NY · CHI–TOK · JNB–LON · NY–AURORA · CME–B3 · LON–HK–SG

04Track record

  1. Paterson Consulting Ltd

    Founder. Low-latency network infrastructure advisory for trading firms.

  2. Margin Syndicate Ltd

    Founder & Director. Systematic derivatives trading firm. Principal-side experience of the infrastructure this practice advises on.

  3. GTT Communications

    2017–2020

    Network Infrastructure & Trading Connectivity Specialist. Hibernia Express transatlantic system and Custom Connect microwave; trading connectivity for firms including Deribit, Flow Traders, Standard Chartered and Optiver.

  4. Liquid

    Solutions Engineer. Layer-1 optical transmission and the Johannesburg–London low-latency path.

  5. Level 3 / Global Crossing

    Solutions Engineer. Transatlantic and long-haul backbone including the fastest London–New York route prior to Hibernia Express.

CCNP · MEF CECP

05How engagements run

Study

A scoped, fixed-fee piece of analysis with a written deliverable and stated kill criteria.

Retainer

Standing advisory across sourcing, vendor management and architecture decisions.

Commissioning

Build-phase oversight through to acceptance and in-house handover.

06Contact

Engagements are taken selectively. Describe the corridor or the problem.

steven@marginsyndicate.com