Senior Quantitative Trader

Founding Quantitative Trader

Research, Modelling, and Live Trading

London (Mayfair, on-site), full-time.

Axon Labs

At Axon Labs we are building the DeepMind of real-time intelligence with the business model of Renaissance Technologies. We are a systematic trading and research lab that combines cognitive science, neuroscience-inspired architectures (the Axon Cognitive Architecture), and machine learning to build brain-inspired models that predict in real time and on the edge. High-frequency trading is the engine that funds the long-term research. We are backed by Northzone, a16z Speedrun, and Concept Ventures.

Our vision runs beyond finance, to intelligent systems that learn faster, decide better, and run more efficiently across robotics, wearables, and autonomous systems.

The role

We are already live. Multiple strategies run in production across venues, and we have grown a small, senior research team since we started trading. This role deepens that bench. You will work directly with founders, researchers, and traders to find, build, and run live trading strategies, owning the path from signal to execution and sharpening it over time.

What you’ll own

• Predictive models for short-horizon alpha across venues and instruments
• Execution and market-making strategies, optimised for fill quality and cost
• The path from research idea to live, risk-managed deployment
• Real-time risk, monitoring, and control around live strategies
• Statistical and ML methods applied to streaming, high-frequency time-series
• Working directly with exchange protocols and market-data feeds

What the first six months might include

• Taking a research idea from backtest to live trading on real size
• Improving live strategy performance: better signals, tighter execution, lower cost
• Building or sharpening the research and backtesting tooling you rely on
• Extending coverage to new venues or instruments

These are illustrative. You will help set the priorities.

Likely background

You might come from Jane Street, D. E. Shaw, Two Sigma, Hudson River, Optiver, XTX, Citadel, or a systematic / HFT desk at a serious bank or fund. What matters more than the logo: you have built models or strategies that traded real money, and you understand markets at the microstructure level.

Signals we look for

• Built models or strategies that traded live, with real P&L consequences
• Strong grasp of market microstructure and order-book dynamics
• High research rigour: honest about out-of-sample, regimes, and costs
• Comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and moving quickly
• You want ownership, not a narrow mandate

Technical depth

• Quantitative research and automated / systematic trading experience
• Strong understanding of market microstructure and order-book dynamics
• C++ for low-latency paths; Python for research
• Statistical and ML methods for streaming time-series
• Familiarity with FIX and real-time exchange data
• A postgraduate degree in Maths, CS, Physics, or Engineering from a strong university is common, though not required
• Bonus: experience with execution algorithms or market making

What makes this exceptional

• Founding-level ownership with direct influence over how we trade and research
• A live system in real markets, with immediate feedback loops
• Work directly with exceptional founders, researchers, and traders
• The chance to create edge, not just maintain it
• Small team, high talent density, high trust, ambitious scope

Compensation

Competitive salary, a performance-linked bonus, and meaningful founding equity. This is an early hire: the equity is real, and so is the upside if we get this right.

Apply

Send your CV, GitHub link, and optionally a short note on your favourite trading or ML project to ayush@axonlabs.co.

The team

A small, dense, high-pedigree team: senior ex-professionals from Citadel, XTX, Brevan Howard and Citi, graduates and postgraduates from Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton and Cornell. This is a research-lab culture: high trust, high autonomy, low bureaucracy, and a very high bar.

Founders

Nick D’Aloisio, CEO (Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Google Scholar)

Nick is a three-time founder with two eight-figure exits. His first app, Summly, was acquired by Yahoo (becoming Yahoo News Digest and winning an Apple Design Award, among others). His second company, Sphere, was acquired by Twitter, where he went on to lead Twitter Communities. He is also an angel investor in DeepMind. Alongside building companies, he holds three degrees from the University of Oxford, including a PhD on the brain (philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and neuroscience). We are leveraging his research and active inference to build faster, smarter, and cheaper models that are genuinely brain-inspired.

Ayush Shah, CTO (LinkedIn, Google Scholar)

Ayush brings a decade of AI experience, driving research breakthroughs and turning them into products used by millions worldwide. He has worked at IBM Research and PolyAI, and led engineering at Unlikely AI. He holds significant patents and publications in AI, reflecting a sustained track record of innovation. He earned his Master’s from the University of Oxford, specialising in advances that make deep reinforcement learning more tractable for autonomous driving.