Quantitative Researcher – Digital Assets

About the role:
IMC is looking for an experienced Quantitative Researcher to help develop and improve trading and execution strategies within our Digital Assets business. In this role, you will work on complex, high-impact problems at the intersection of quantitative research, market microstructure, machine learning, and automated trading.

You will join a collaborative, multidisciplinary team of researchers, traders, and engineers focused on building robust, data-driven strategies for cryptocurrency markets. Your work will directly contribute to improving execution quality, trading capacity, and overall strategy performance in a fast-moving market environment.

This is a role for someone who enjoys solving hard research problems, working with large and complex datasets, and seeing their ideas translated into production trading systems.

Your Core Responsibilities
•    Develop, test, and improve models and algorithms for trading and optimal execution in crypto markets;
•    Research execution quality in delta one, mid-frequency, and intraday trading contexts, with a focus on reducing trading costs and improving performance;
•    Generate high-quality, testable signals using order book data, trade data, market microstructure insights, and statistical or machine learning techniques;
•    Work closely with peer researchers, traders, and quant developers to translate research into production strategies;
•    Design and improve high-frequency trading and execution frameworks, including alpha research, market impact modelling, execution benchmarking, and performance profiling;
•    Analyse large order and trade datasets for post-trade analytics, PnL decomposition, and strategy performance monitoring;
•    Build tools and research processes that help identify blind spots, measure trading costs, and uncover new opportunities;
•    Take ownership of research initiatives from idea generation through testing, implementation, and production feedback.

Your Skills and Experience:
•    Advanced degree with excellent academic results in Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Statistics, or another highly quantitative field;
•    Experience as a Quantitative Researcher, ideally in high- or mid-frequency delta one execution research;
•    Strong understanding of market microstructure, order book dynamics, execution costs, and short-term price movements;
•    Experience developing predictive features from trade, order, and order book data;
•    Demonstrable interest in cryptocurrency markets; practical crypto trading or research experience is highly preferred;
•    Significant practical experience working with large, messy, high-frequency datasets.
•    Understanding of position management, market risk, optimal execution, implementation shortfall, and transaction cost modelling;
•    Strong Python skills and experience with SQL or another database query language.
•    Scientific mindset, with a rigorous and structured approach to testing, validation, robustness, and avoiding overfitting;
•    Ability to write clean, reliable code and contribute to simple, well-architected research and trading systems;
•    Strong sense of ownership, accountability, and curiosity;
•    Technical achievements such as Kaggle competitions, hackathons, Olympiads, publications, or open-source contributions are considered a plus.

About Us

IMC is a global trading firm powered by a cutting-edge research environment and a world-class technology backbone. Since 1989, we’ve been a stabilizing force in financial markets, providing essential liquidity upon which market participants depend. Across our offices in the US, Europe, Asia Pacific, and India, our talented quant researchers, engineers, traders, and business operations professionals are united by our uniquely collaborative, high-performance culture, and our commitment to giving back. From entering dynamic new markets to embracing disruptive technologies, and from developing an innovative research environment to diversifying our trading strategies, we dare to continuously innovate and collaborate to succeed.