Senior Algorithmic Trading Research

Quantitative research contributes to design and management of execution algorithms for global equities, futures, and foreign exchange with the aim of continuously minimizing trading costs for our clients. BestEx Research quants will learn about algorithmic trading, data management, performance measurement, and market microstructure, globally. Quants are nested within a talented team of experts and practitioners in the field and may participate in writing research papers and interface closely with client research teams to improve trading
costs. Our internal research environment includes tick-by-tick market data, historical backtesting simulators, instrument-level daily analytics and normalized order and execution data to facilitate new research. Our infrastructure allows speedy creation of execution algorithms and contains simulation capability for testing.

Responsibilities:

● Contribute to end-to-end research and implementation of execution algorithms, including idea generation, data collection and cleaning, model development, evaluation, and improvement
● Model short-term price prediction, market impact estimation, understanding drivers of trading costs and optimizing the algorithms to mitigate the impact from those drivers
● Develop rigorous and innovative research to understand execution performance, market microstructure behaviors in equities, futures, and foreign exchange markets
● Review results of production implementation including verification and testing

● Document theory, models, and results for a variety of audiences
● Present your models and algorithms to clients

● Analyze and understand the idiosyncratic characteristics of client order flow and optimize execution algorithms

Requirements

● PhD in computer science, quantitative finance, or other quantitative fields with a strong foundation in statistics and programming
● Prior experience building high frequency trading strategies, algorithmic trading strategies or statistical arbitrage is valued but not required
● Experience using data to answer questions and communicating the results, including model building
● Experience cleaning data, quickly and efficiently scrubbing, formatting, and manipulating large, raw data sources
● Strong command of the foundations of applied statistics and modeling
● Strong preference for demonstrated proficiency in SQL and R or Python, but experience using at least one programming language is required
● Experience with C++ valued but not required; if no prior experience, candidates must be willing to learn application-level C++ programming
● Excellent communication skills and ability to articulate ideas and work to colleagues and clients
● Highly motivated, willing to take ownership of work
● Collaborative mindset with strong independent research abilities

Benefits

Why BestEx Research:

If you want to help investors reduce their trading costs in an incredibly complex market structure and help create and shape an industry-defining product, then this is an excellent opportunity to join an incredibly talented team of 20+. BestEx Research has almost zero turnover, top notch clients, zero bureaucracy, and a flat organizational structure. It is a true meritocracy, set in a collaborative environment, where every employee is working on extraordinarily interesting projects. Our pay scale and benefits are comparable to other firms in our industry, either in the form of cash compensation or a hybrid cash and equity compensation plan. Employees at BestEx Research have exposure to much more variety in the projects they complete and opportunities for growth than in similar roles at other firms.