Research Lead

At dYdX you'll have an opportunity to build state-of-the-art decentralized technologies that will redefine global financial markets. By joining us at this stage in our growth, you will help make fundamental decisions that will shape the course of dYdX. 

→ Learn more about working at dYdX

ABOUT dYdX:

• We’ve built the software underlying the world’s leading decentralized exchange for advanced trading of crypto derivatives
• dYdX is founded by an ex-Coinbase, ex-Uber engineer, with a Princeton CS background. Our team has previous experience at Coinbase, Uniswap, Google, Amazon, Lyft, Meta and other top companies
• We're a world-class team with top backers and advisors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, Brian Armstrong, Fred Ehrsam, Naval Ravikant, Elad Gil, and more 

RESPONSIBILITIES:

As the Research Lead at dYdX, you will drive strategic insights at the intersection of market structure, protocol and mechanism design, and user behavior. Your work will shape the core protocol and broader ecosystem narratives during a pivotal stage of decentralization and global expansion. 

Protocol & Incentive Research

• Conduct cutting edge research into market structure, protocol design and mechanics, and incentive design, including
• Internal-facing research to help the business understand user behavior, product performance, and growth opportunities
• External-facing projects to contribute to the global conversation on protocol design, trading, and DeFi evolution
• Educational content to help our audience become more sophisticated traders and product users 
• Collaborate with Engineering team and other parts of the business and communicate research findings clearly across technical and non-technical audiences
• Collaborate with the Growth team to identify and define key audience segments and leverage data-driven insights to inform growth strategies and guide product decisions
• Take strong initiative in leading deep and exploratory research on open-ended questions that the team has around core product features and protocol development

Data & Infrastructure

• Own and continuously enhance data infrastructure by optimizing systems, evaluating new tools, and promoting data best practices across the organization
• Help define key metrics for protocol health and trader behavior
• Build tools and pipelines to support research reproducibility and insight generation

Thought Leadership & Community

• Help shape and clearly communicate dYdX’s product strategy through research-driven insights and external thought leadership 
• Collaborate with dYdX ecosystem partners and actively engage with the broader user community to enrich the research perspective and stay aligned with ecosystem needs

REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in quantitative fields (Math, Computer Science, Physics, Statistics, Economics) or a related field
• 4+ years working experience in a technical role (Developer, Analyst, Quant, Data Scientist) 
• 2+ years of experience working with blockchain or order book data (e.g. experience indexing blocks, building dashboards in Dune or similar, working with market data from crypto exchanges)
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
• Project management, time management, and ability to multitask
• Proficient with data visualization tools for generating insights and communicating findings effectively
• Entrepreneurial and intellectually curious, with a passion for asking the right questions, exploring data, and developing well-reasoned hypotheses

NICE TO HAVES:

• Experience in or knowledge of trading (especially HFT), market structure, and derivatives
• Knowledge of and passion for everything in DeFi (especially dYdX!) and web3 with a track record
• Ideally have an existing personal research/content brand
• Experience with our technologies: SQL / Python / Pandas / xarray / Mode / Amplitude / BigQuery

Salary range for this job is $220K to $270K USD (NY). Compensation subject to experience and location. Published salary bands pursuant to transparency laws, and do not include possible variable compensation such as annual merit increases, bonus eligibility, commission, or equity incentive.