Research Director - New York or Singapore

XTX Markets is an algorithmic trading firm that actively trades tens of thousands of instruments on over eighty venues with a daily volume of almost three hundred billion USD. Our trading algorithms generate billions of dollars of PNL per year. They are developed by our quant team, which consists of fewer than twenty researchers and a research cluster of 100,000 cores and more than 12,000 A/V100 GPUs (and growing fast). The algorithms we develop are necessarily extremely general and robust.

The models that drive our trading strategies evolved considerably over the last 10 years, from econometric methods that gave a name to the company, to trees, to neural networks, to modern deep learning architectures.

We are actively seeking new methods and ideas. To this end, we are seeking to hire an experienced machine-learning research director to lead the creation of a new research incubation unit. This new unit will be a separate group to our existing team, focused on original research ideas with the most promising approaches applied by our quant team. You will have freedom to explore novel methods, actively encouraging the team to do the same. As part of XTX, you will be able to leverage our research cluster, data and associated technology to achieve your research goals.

You will collaborate with our executive team to define the operational structure, goals, and research direction of this unit. We expect to hire interns at PHD/Postdoc level, in cohorts of 4-5 interns with each engagement lasting at least 6 months. We expect that the highest-performing interns will join our core quant team in a full-time capacity after their academic engagements.

This role will be located in either our New York or Singapore office.

• Design, build and execute a research plan and associated operational infrastructure alongside senior leadership at XTX.
• Help define and execute a plan to hire the best possible candidates in collaboration with the XTX recruitment team.
• Provide a clear research direction to all hires and provide guidance and pastoral support as needed.
• Build long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with leading academic institutions.
• We expect that you will be able to meaningfully contribute to research either as a collaborator or individual contributor.

• Demonstrable experience managing and/or directing world-class, original, machine learning research in a leading academic or industry lab (preferably both).
• Demonstrable experience contributing to cutting-edge, modern machine learning research – particularly deep learning. You will have an impressive publication and leadership record.
• You will have an excellent mathematical foundation, especially in areas such as linear algebra, probability, statistics, calculus etc.
• Experience managing researchers at the earlier stage of their career journey; able to encourage, direct and grow exceptional talent.
• Ability to operate in ambiguity – the nature of the work will be to carry out original research to be consumed by our core quantitative research group.

Our interview process seeks to gain signal in the following topics:

• Modern machine learning techniques, especially deep learning
• Classical machine learning techniques
• Probability theory
• General mathematics (linear algebra, analysis etc)
• Computer science / algorithms

Your process will follow the following format:

• Phone or video call with a quant researcher covering the above topics. You may have a second if we do not cover all the topics.
• Practical assignment - we provide a dataset, and this exercise is about building a model end-to-end.
• Onsite interview - there will be 10 interviewers, and you will be interviewed on each topic twice.

Success Criteria:

• We seek to get a broad signal in our process. Successful candidates are those who are strong in all areas and exceed expectations in at least one. We will also seek evidence of your ability to direct research and develop junior researchers.

APPLY HERE

The base salary range for this role is between $750,000 to $1.5m depending on relevant job-related skills and experience. You will be eligible for participation in a discretionary annual performance bonus scheme and will enjoy a comprehensive package of benefits. All bonuses, benefits, and any sign-on payments are in addition to the base salary range stated.