Drift Labs - Junior Quantitative Trader JD
About the Role
We’re looking for a proactive and sharp quantitative researcher/trader to design, deploy, and optimize trading strategies that drive volume, liquidity, and healthy market activity on Drift. You’ll operate at the intersection of research, engineering, and trading, running real strategies on Solana and working closely with core contributors to strengthen Drift’s market dynamics.This role is ideal for someone who thrives in fast-paced environments, enjoys owning full research and trading pipelines end-to-end, and is excited to innovate within DeFi.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and deploy automated trading strategies (taker, maker, arbitrage, funding-based, etc.) across Drift perps and spot markets or other exchanges
- Monitor and optimize strategy performance based on PnL, volume generated, capital efficiency, and risk
- Backtest and simulate strategies using Drift historical data and external datasets
- Run risk-managed strategies on-chain, including delta-neutral or directional plays, with real capital
- Contribute to Drift liquidity growth by identifying inefficiencies, quoting opportunities, or gaps in market depth
- Analyze Drift trading activity and data to uncover new opportunities or flag anomalies
- Build internal dashboards and tracking tools for strategy metrics, trade logs, and capital usage
Qualifications
- Strong coding skills in Python, TypeScript, or Rust
- Hands-on experience with DeFi trading, market-making, or crypto strategy development
- Fluency in financial concepts like PnL attribution, slippage, Sharpe/Sortino, and liquidity metrics
- Familiarity with Solana development tools, on-chain data, and trading APIs
- Strong sense of ownership, reliability, and execution speed
- Bonus: Experience using Drift or building on Solana
Success in This Role Looks Like
- Sustained, measurable volume and liquidity contribution across Drift markets
- Deployed strategies running profitably and safely on mainnet
- Clean, well-documented code and thoughtful strategy design
- Novel insights from data that influence Drift’s market and protocol strategy
