Quantitative Developer

Who are we?

Smarkets is a betting exchange for sports and political trading that has handled over £29 billion in volume since 2010. Our company mission is to fix the betting industry with the best products and best prices. We are upending the sports betting industry by growing a transparent platform that offers the best value for bettors, with the fairest odds, best technology and a superior customer experience.

Smarkets is a Series B tech company that brings a professional, product-led approach to our mission. We embrace collaboration, trust, innovation and scientific rigour, while we celebrate ambitious goals and passionate energy. Our culture rewards people on merit and excellence and we strive to provide a working environment where recognition, challenges, support, collaboration, interesting benefits and shared meals provided by our chefs mix together to let you unlock your potential, grow with us and become your best self.

Join our team and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our betting trading technology landscape.

Role expectations and responsibilities

The Trading department prices a large volume of markets in a number of different sports. Our code is mostly Python with Rust used for performance critical components. Within it, the Quant Trading team works closely with our developer team and domain expert trading operations team.

Having generated terabytes of data from multiple sources, the Data Science team looks at novel ways of analysing, visualising, and then using the insight to improve performance of our existing strategies or create new ones. We are also constantly looking at ways to improve the value and efficiency of our analysis, backtesting and reporting.

• You will own a suite of our trading strategies and be responsible for overseeing and maintaining them through post trading analysis and improvement of their business logic
• You will research and develop new abilities to enable us to price more markets profitably using a mix of correlations/derivatives and fundamental modelling
• You will use and develop automated reporting to improve our post trade analysis
• You display strong analytical and problem-solving kills, able to clean and analyse large datasets and dissect the results you’re seeing into real world explanations
• You are able to communicate complex problems and collaborate with technical and non technical teams
• You are proactive and a self starter, able to come up with ideas and solutions to improve our trading performance
• You display pragmatism and are able to balance short term results with good design for future reiteration

Role Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in related disciplines (Maths, CompSci, Physics or Stats)
• Strong understanding of probability and statistical prediction
• Proficiency with Python (including numpy, pandas) and SQL
• Machine learning experience
• Passion for professional sports and an understanding of sports rules is a must
• Keen interest in developing trading strategies
• Prior experience working in the sports betting industry in a trading environment either institutionally or for yourself

Benefits and Values

We offer a competitive salary package and benefits, along with a dynamic and collaborative work environment. Our values are at the heart of everything that we do. We want to see all our employees push to win, make others better, give a shit, be a pro and bring the energy.

We believe these are the fundamentals to ensure we are delivering what's expected of us in the best way possible for ourselves and for those around us. Your work with us will make an impact and your voice will be heard. We are a diverse team with a strong work ethic and plenty of hunger to win. We have designed our benefits offering around Health, Wealth, Lifestyle and Development. These include:

• Stock options which vests over 4 years
• Pension scheme - an impressive pension scheme via Aviva. We will match 6% if you choose the same
• Health insurance
• Fresh fruit and snacks provided in the office everyday! (tea, coffee and soft drinks also included)
• We're a member of a cycle to work scheme
• We want to continue to invest in all our employees and do so by providing a £1000 yearly education budget that can be used on courses, conferences, books or training
• 25 days paid holiday + bank holidays to enjoy - you have the choice to carry over 5 days to the next year!
• Flexible working - we want to provide a hybrid model approach to working and provide you with 2 days a week working from home
• 20 days a year of global working - we provide the ability to work from anywhere in the world for up to 20 days a year
• We will provide lunch everyday in the office - you don't need to worry about what to make or buy for lunch as we have it sorted with top quality food served by our in-house chef Alex!