Quantitative Developer

DRW is a diversified trading firm with over three decades of experience in sophisticated technology and exceptional people. Headquartered in Chicago and operating worldwide, the firm trades across many asset classes and has expanded into real estate, venture capital, and cryptoassets.

We are building a new systematic, mid‑frequency trading business that combines data, machine learning, and high‑performance software to identify and trade opportunities at scale.

About the Role

As a Quantitative Developer / Research Engineer you will be an early member of the team with meaningful ownership of its systems, research tooling, and engineering practices. You will work closely with experienced researchers and trading‑system engineers across the firm, combining autonomy with mentorship.

You Will

• Design and build the core research and trading platform, including data pipelines, backtesting and simulation frameworks, portfolio and execution tooling, and research APIs.
• Work closely with quantitative researchers to implement studies, test hypotheses, and translate promising ideas into robust production systems.
• Develop and productionize statistical and machine learning models, owning the workflow from feature generation and training through backtesting, deployment, and live monitoring.
• Build reliable data infrastructure for large historical and real‑time datasets, with an emphasis on point‑in‑time correctness, reproducibility, performance and ease of use.
• Improve the performance and scalability of computationally intensive research and production workloads.
• Contribute to foundational architecture and engineering decisions, working with experienced trading‑system engineers to establish development practices, testing standards and operational processes.
• Take systems and strategies from prototype to production and remain accountable for their reliability once they are live.

What You Bring

• A bachelor's, master's or PhD in computer science, computer engineering or another technical field.
• At least two years of experience developing production software, primarily in Python and/or C++, with the ability and willingness to work across languages when needed.
• Strong computer science fundamentals and sound instincts in software design, debugging, testing and performance analysis.
• The ability to enter an unfamiliar system, develop a clear mental model and identify practical ways to improve its reliability, simplicity and performance.
• Fluency in a UNIX/Linux environment and a working understanding of operating systems, concurrency, networking and system performance.
• A track record of scoping and delivering production systems in fast‑moving or ambiguous environments.
• High ownership, good judgment and a bias toward action—you identify risks early, reduce unnecessary complexity and take pride in building systems that others rely on.
• Clear communication and a collaborative working style, particularly when working across research and engineering disciplines.

Nice to Have

• Experience developing deep learning systems with PyTorch.
• Experience with GPU computing, kernel development, distributed training or performance optimization.
• Hands‑on experience building and operating machine learning or data pipelines in production.
• Experience developing large‑scale, concurrent, high‑throughput or performance‑sensitive systems.
• A strong foundation in mathematics, statistics, optimization or machine learning.
• Experience building tools and infrastructure for quantitative researchers, data scientists or similarly technical users.

Why This Role

• Build from an early stage – Help shape a new systematic trading business with broad scope, short feedback loops and the opportunity to share in its success.
• Autonomy with mentorship – Make meaningful technical decisions while learning from experienced researchers and trading‑system engineers across the team and the firm.
• Broad, end‑to‑end ownership – Take systems from research and development through deployment and live trading, working across software, data, machine learning and financial markets.
• AI‑native engineering – Work in an environment where AI‑assisted coding, testing and research are deeply embedded in the development workflow.

The annual base salary range for this position is $175,000 to $250,000, depending on the candidate’s experience, qualifications and relevant skill set. The position is also eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. DRW offers a comprehensive suite of employee benefits, including group medical, pharmacy, dental and vision insurance, 401(k) with discretionary employer match, short‑ and long‑term disability, life and AD&D insurance, health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts.

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As set forth in DRW’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.