FTMO plans to hire about 300 people over the next 14 months, roughly half for teams at OANDA, which it acquired last year. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Marek Vašíček outlined the plan to Czech outlet CzechCrunch today (Friday).
About two-thirds of the roles are technical, according to the report, and candidates for OANDA's teams will also be hired in Prague. FTMO paid about $422 million for OANDA, partly with a $250 million bank loan, in December 2025.
The group has about 400 staff at FTMO and about 600 at OANDA, so the plan would expand its workforce by roughly 30%. FTMO alone had more than 300 employees when it marked its 10th anniversary with over $450 million paid to traders in September 2025.
The plan runs against the direction of the trading industry. In an Acuiti survey for the second quarter of 2026, 44% of institutional proprietary trading firms said AI was slowing their hiring, and 15% had cut headcount because of it.
London's trading industry is coming home!
Brokers Cut Up to 10% of Staff as FTMO Adds Nearly a Third
Vašíček said the more FTMO can do with AI, the more people it needs.
AI "won't tell us what to build, and it isn't responsible for it," he said.
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Retail brokers that announced layoffs this year sized them at no more than a tenth of their workforce, and AI featured in at least two of the explanations.
eToro cut about 7% of its global staff in January, and IronFX cut about 150 of its roughly 1,500 jobs in March. eToro said it was using process automation and AI to operate more efficiently, while sources cited efficiency amid the AI wave at IronFX.
FP Markets reduced its global workforce by less than 7% in April. By FinanceMagnates.com's calculation, FTMO's plan would add about three times as many people, relative to the group's size, as IronFX removed.
OANDA Takes Half the New Roles
Half of the hiring targets OANDA, where the founders have already changed the management since the takeover.
Vašíček and co-founder Otakar Šuffner have run OANDA as co-CEOs since Gavin Bambury stepped down in March. Vašíček said they parted ways with several people after the takeover and are now strengthening existing teams.
He also said OANDA does not offer everything it could in many of its markets. Its estimated trading volume fell 10% quarter-over-quarter in the third quarter of 2026, FM Intelligence's broker volumes tracker shows.
AI Spending in the Millions, Listing Not Ruled Out
FTMO is looking for experienced hires, including AI specialists and product engineers who use AI to take a feature from brief to launch, CzechCrunch reported. A two-day sprint at the Prague office replaces the usual three interview rounds, with a decision within 24 hours.
FTMO spends millions of dollars a year on AI and has direct contracts with Anthropic and Google, according to the report. It has automated content, translations and invoicing.
FTMO plans four product launches next year and is building out futures, which it opened to traders in beta in August, according to CzechCrunch.
The group reported 2025 revenue of about $420 million, up 31%, while net income fell 59% to roughly $37.5 million, the founders told FinanceMagnates.com in October. In that interview, Šuffner did not rule out a stock market listing.
"An FTMO ticker sounds really cool," he said.
Vašíček told CzechCrunch the idea has no concrete outline yet. Two CFD brokers pursued public listings in the first quarter of 2026, the most listing activity in the sector since Plus500's 2013 debut, according to FM Intelligence.
