Software Engineer - Research Technology
About the job
- At least 2 years of professional experience building large-scale, high-performance systems, with daily use of modern C++ (C++17 or later) and Python.
- Strong computer science fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, networking, operating systems, concurrency, and system design.
- Data engineering fluency, including designing schemas, choosing storage formats, understanding compression and input/output trade-offs, and operating pipelines that write and read hundreds of terabytes; familiarity reasoning about columnar formats such as Parquet and Arrow, or equivalent formats in the candidate's domain.
- Experience designing and operating services or platforms used by other technical users in data-intensive environments.
- Comfort supporting internal users and iterating on ergonomics and workflows.
- Demonstrated ability to ship production software safely and repeatedly, with a focus on data-driven quality.
- Written and verbal communication and a collaborative, empathetic approach.
- Design, build, and maintain high-performance, scalable software and data systems used by quantitative researchers and trading teams.
- Implement raw exchange data pipelines in modern C++ and operate them at high-throughput scale.
- Orchestrate data and compute pipelines on high-performance computing clusters and improve their reliability.
- Create ad-hoc computation frameworks and research tooling that let researchers slice data, backtest, and iterate rapidly, using Python and C++ integrations.
- Develop and maintain simulation frameworks tightly integrated with high-frequency trading and live trading platforms.
- Support training and deployment of quantitative models used in trading.
- Monitor, manage, and troubleshoot distributed platforms.
- Optimize codebases for performance, reliability, and resource efficiency across the full stack.
- Rust experience alongside C++ and Python.
- Experience running compute at cluster scale, including job scheduling, resource management, retries, and reliability; relevant systems include Slurm, Kubernetes, Ray, Spark, or custom internal schedulers.
- GPU programming experience.
- Familiarity with machine learning or deep learning frameworks.
- Prior finance or market-data experience, including low-level market connectivity.
- Exposure to historical network or packet processing, such as telecommunications, network appliances, or packet-capture replay infrastructure.
- Exposure to deterministic simulation and replay systems, such as game engines, cell simulators, or distributed-systems testing frameworks.
- Dev-productivity or platform engineering for internal users, including internship or open-source work.
About the company
DRW identifies and captures trading and investment opportunities worldwide. It trades across many asset classes and instruments in markets around the globe, with time horizons ranging from seconds to years. The company relies on technology, in-depth research, and risk management to execute its strategies. DRW blends the energy and flexibility of a startup with the stability of an established firm, emphasizing continuous learning, collaboration, and high standards. Its goal is to find and exploit a broad range of opportunities to create value for the firm and its clients, while rewarding employees for their results.
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
M&A
Total Funding
$2.5B
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois
Founded
2001
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Kaiko raised $110 million on 2026-09-14 with DRW Venture Capital participating.
- DRW's 2026 venture portfolio supports tokenized markets infrastructure and exchange connectivity.
- Europe's volatile gas market widens spreads, while hedge funds aggressively hire commodity traders.
What critics are saying
- Bloomberg reported on 2026-02-25 that gas traders Kennedy and Findlay left Houston.
- South Carolina complaint filed 2026-07-29 targets DRW over Polymarket-linked sports-bet market making.
- SEC scrutiny on crypto dealers remains dangerous after Cumberland DRW's 2024 case and 2025 dismissal.
What makes DRW unique
- DRW trades proprietary capital across markets, avoiding outside LP constraints and fee drag.
- Cumberland DRW's crypto-marketmaking expertise gives DRW direct optionality in digital-asset microstructure.
- DRW Venture Capital backs market infrastructure names like Kaiko, Alpaca, and Kraken.
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Benefits
Daily catered breakfast & lunch
Massages
Social events
Gym subsidy
Flexible work arrangements
Monthly tastings
Game room
On-site yoga classes and meditation
Employee led affinity groups
Mentor/mentee outings
Trivia nights
Educational opportunities
DRW-sponsored sports teams
Poker tournament
Private mother's suite
Company News
HyLight raises €13M to expand its airship inspection fleet. Building the aircraft and interpreting its observations gives HyLight responsibility for both ends of an inspection. The French startup sends hydrogen-powered airships over infrastructure, then turns what their sensors collect into information that maintenance teams can use. Its founders are expanding a business whose delivery continues after the aircraft lands. HyLight announced a €13M Series A financing on October 12, 2026, led by Rubio Impact Ventures with DRW and Teampact.ventures. The amount is approximately $14.5M at the European Central Bank's October 12 reference rate. The company plans to increase its operating fleet from 4 HyLighters to 15 in 2027, bringing more aircraft and more analysis capacity to the inspection of energy and transport networks. The investment reaches a practical point in HyLight's development. The company says it has inspected 7,000 km and has 45 people, with aircraft operating daily. For an infrastructure operator, greater inspection coverage becomes valuable when the findings help determine which section of a network needs attention and how urgently crews should respond. A Series A financing with a fleet attached. The company's announcement identifies the transaction as a Series A and Rubio as the lead investor. Rubio's own dated announcement confirms its role and names DRW, Teampact Ventures and Y Combinator among the participants, alongside unnamed angels. The company-distributed release also identifies returning investor Ring Capital. That places new capital beside institutions already familiar with HyLight's development. The €13M headline needs its financing context. Private Equity Magazine reports that the package is divided equally between equity and debt. HyLight's company announcement presents the overall amount without that breakdown, so the reported split should travel with an attribution. Readers should understand the disclosed total as financing rather than assume the entire sum represents newly issued equity; the dollar figure here is a dated conversion of that total. HyLight had previously announced €3.7M in April 2024. The earlier company release focused on scaling operations and developing aircraft that could be produced more efficiently. The current fleet target moves that work into a larger operating commitment: manufacturing aircraft, keeping them available and handling the observations they return all become part of the expansion. The announcements do not establish a comparable cumulative equity total or disclose a valuation. The customer buys an inspection that becomes usable. Power lines, pipelines and railways give HyLight a very specific customer problem. These are extended networks, and a maintenance team has to make decisions about locations spread across a wide area. Aerial sensing can supply evidence about that area, but the buyer still needs the evidence organized around the work somebody will perform on the ground. HyLight's technology description puts long-duration flight, detailed sensing and analysis inside the same service. The company's aircraft carry equipment for optical observation, LiDAR and gas-leak detection. Its website presents a dashboard that turns aerial data into information about anomalies and infrastructure condition. The aircraft and the software therefore share a commercial purpose: help the operator move from an observation to a maintenance decision. The company describes its aircraft as producing no direct emissions in flight, with low noise. That is a useful, bounded operating claim. It does not account for the full lifecycle of manufacturing the aircraft or producing and delivering hydrogen, and the financing announcement supplies no independently audited lifecycle comparison. The immediate buyer question remains concrete: what can the service observe, under which operating conditions, and how does that observation fit the existing inspection program? HyLight identifies customers including Enedis, NaTran, Téréga, SNCF Réseau and VINCI in its company-distributed announcement. Those relationships and the reported inspection distance provide more context than a demonstration flight alone. They do not reveal contract values, customer retention or savings per kilometre, which remain undisclosed in the evidence reviewed for this article. Three founders own the journey from flight to finding. HyLight's current team page identifies Martin Bocken as cofounder and CEO, Josef Rokusek as cofounder and CTO, and Thomas Laporte as cofounder and CBO. Founded in 2022, the company operates from Air Base 217 at Brétigny-sur-Orge, near Paris. Its legal and headquarters locality is listed as Le Plessis-Pâté, connecting its French aerospace operation to a service aimed at European infrastructure owners. Keeping engineering, analysis and operations inside the company gives the founders a broad operating responsibility. Decisions made during aircraft design affect what a sensor can collect; decisions in analysis affect what a customer receives. The integrated arrangement can keep that feedback close to the people who can change the product. It also means a larger fleet brings several kinds of work to the same management table. The company says the new financing will support industrialization and stronger automated data analysis, alongside European expansion. Germany and the Netherlands are named as priority markets in its distributed release, and its careers page shows hiring across the business. These are expansion plans. Bringing them into service requires the aircraft program and the people interpreting its output to grow in coordination, with operating permissions and customer requirements attached to each deployment. Rubio frames its investment around two connected opportunities: replacing carbon-intensive inspection flights and finding faults earlier. For a buyer, that connects the means of inspection to the reliability of the infrastructure being inspected. A cleaner flight and a useful finding serve related needs, even though each needs its own evidence and operating assessment. HyLight's 2027 goal gives that investment case a visible destination. Fifteen operating aircraft would put more collection capacity into the field than the 4 the company reports today, and the analysis service would have to absorb the resulting observations. The next stretch of work runs through aircraft availability, clear findings and the maintenance schedules of customers whose networks keep carrying electricity, gas and passengers while the inspection fleet grows.
S&P Global has led a strategic investment in Kaiko, extending the company’s Series B to $110 million. The funding will accelerate Kaiko’s regulated data infrastructure for digital assets and tokenized markets, with leading financial institutions joining a new Strategic Industry Working Group.
Hedge funds step up hiring of natural gas traders. * September 2, 2026 * - 10:58 am Related topics. Hedge funds are intensifying their search for natural gas traders as Europe heads towards another potentially volatile winter, with tighter supplies and geopolitical risks creating a bigger opportunity set for energy-focused strategies, according to a report by eFinancial Careers. The competition for experienced gas traders has become particularly intense, with leading hedge funds prepared to offer significantly greater earnings potential than traditional energy companies and trading houses. Balyasny Asset Management has been among the firms expanding its natural gas capabilities. The hedge fund has hired Sayan Palchowdhury in New York from DRW, where he had been trading natural gas after beginning his career in the market at Goldman Sachs. The move comes as Balyasny continues to build out its gas operation, including a European physical natural gas trading business established under Kristian Juncker in 2024. The firm has also recruited commodities specialists from Centrica's energy trading operation. DRW, meanwhile, has experienced a series of departures from its gas trading business. Recent exits include former US gas trading head Teoman Guler, European gas trading head Hayn Park, Michael Kennedy, Adam Findlay and Andrew Mugica, who moved to Millennium. Palchowdhury's departure adds to the turnover. Recruiters say the battle for experienced natural gas specialists has reached unusually high levels. The compensation differential is helping drive the migration. Traders at energy merchants and utilities can typically receive around 15% and 10% of the profits they generate respectively, according to Gregory, compared with the potential for more than 20% at a hedge fund. Recent moves have included Zach Millman, who has moved from BP via Millennium to Castletown Commodities, while Xing Yuan has joined ExodusPoint.
Hedge funds are hiring natural gas traders as Europe braces for winter. 2 minutes ago Winter is coming and Europe is short of gas. Hedge funds are doing something about it. They are hiring portfolio managers to take advantage of the volatility. DRW in particular seems to be suffering from departures. Following the exits of Teoman Guler, (head of US gas trading), Hayn Park (head of European gas trading), Michael Kennedy, Adam Findlay and Andrew Mugica (who's gone to Millennium), DRW has also lost Sayan Palchowdhury in New York. Palchowdhury, who began his career trading natural gas at Goldman Sachs, has gone to Balyasny Asset Management (BAM). Balyasny isn't commenting. The fund has been building out its natural gas trading business for at least two years and started building a physical natural gas trading business in Europe under Kristian Juncker in 2024. It's also been raiding Centrica energy, the trading arm of Denmark's Centrica group. Financial News reported this week that funds like raiding Danish gas talent because top engineering schools in Aarhus produce excellent commodities talent, and Denmark is proximate to the key German market. Rupak Ghose noted previously that Aarhus, a port city on the east coast of Jutland, has more than a dozen natural gas trading firms and is a focal point for talent. Kamran Subherwal, head of commodities at Redstone Search, said there's been a string of natural gas moves this year and that the "opportunity set in this sphere is decisively widening." Ross Gregory, the New York-based head of global commodities at search firm Omerta Group, a Kingsley Gate company, said the battle for natural gas traders has hit a "peak level." Top traders tend to have three to four hedge funds bidding for them at once, said Gregory. Traders from energy trading merchants and utilities firms who typically receive 15% and 10% respectively of their PnL are moving to hedge funds where they can 20%+. The recent natural gas movers also include Zach Millman, who went from BP to Millennium to Castletown Commodities and Xing Yuan, who's just gone to ExodusPoint. Gregory says natural gas is an increasingly complicated market to trade. "Natural Gas markets are interlinked globally more than ever, and traders need a greater understanding of broader factors affecting the US & European markets and how they link to LNG/TTF," Gregory observes. It's not just the fact that gas supply has been reduced by war in the Middle East. "El Nino is reshaping weather risks for the natural gas market," he adds. Although hedge funds are out there hiring natural gas traders, Gregory says they're wary of paying huge sign-on bonuses. "What we are seeing now, is that hedge funds will not just pay a lumpy sign-on for the sake of it. They might offer a first year guarantee or accelerator on PnL instead." It probably doesn't help that funds have lost money when gas prices have fluctuated in the past. The Financial Times reported that DRW lost $176m earlier this year. Roscommon Analytics closed its US gas trading desk in January after losses. Rival hedge funds have been picking over its people. Follow me on X. Follow me on LinkedIn. Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you'd like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email [email protected]. Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate. The essential daily roundup of news and analysis read by everyone from senior bankers and traders to new recruits. Boost your career. Find thousands of job opportunities by signing up to eFinancialCareers today. Top Articles
Silicon Data raises $30.5 million Series A to build the independent benchmark layer for the AI compute economy. Silicon Data, providing GPU performance data for companies, led by Carmen Li, and the team, has announced a $30.5 million initial closing of its Series A, led by the Valor Atreides AI Fund, with additional investment from CME Ventures, DRW, F-Prime, Samsung Next, VanEck, Further, Jump, Tectonic, and Wintermute. Breed, Hack, Blank VC, Sancus Ventures, and SoGal Ventures also participated. The Series A will support expansion across four areas: benchmark pricing, performance measurement through SiliconMark, institutional and alternative data, and risk infrastructure for derivatives, insurance, and credit markets. The funding comes as CME Group prepares to use Silicon Data benchmarks for its planned cash-settled GPU futures market, pending regulatory approval. The instrument would allow market participants to hedge exposure to changes in GPU rental prices using a published daily benchmark. Silicon Data CEO Carmen Li said compute is becoming a critical input for the global economy, while the infrastructure for measuring its value, performance, and risk remains underdeveloped. She said Silicon Data aims to provide the independent benchmarks needed to bring greater transparency and standardization to the compute market. Since raising a $4.7 million seed round in March 2025, Silicon Data has grown from a small data provider into a prominent player in compute economics, with more than 1,000 registered users across semiconductor manufacturers, AI companies, and financial institutions. The company has developed nine financial-grade indices covering GPUs and LLMs, alongside market intelligence and alternative datasets tracking supply, demand, utilization, pricing, and economics across the compute ecosystem. Part of the funding will support SiliconMark, which independently measures the real-world performance of GPU infrastructure. Identical GPUs can deliver different output depending on networking, topology, and configuration. By standardizing performance across clusters, SiliconMark can help market participants manage output risk and enable future physical delivery of compute resources. Atreides Management Managing Partner and CIO Gavin Baker said compute has become foundational to the AI economy, but lacks the pricing infrastructure that mature commodity markets use to manage risk. He said Silicon Data is building the benchmark and pricing layer needed to support compute futures and make large-scale AI infrastructure easier to finance. Valor Equity Partners Founder, CEO, and CIO Antonio Gracias said Silicon Data is building the measurement and market intelligence infrastructure needed as the compute economy expands. He highlighted the company's GPU pricing transparency and performance benchmarking as key tools for navigating market uncertainty and supporting the growth of AI infrastructure. Silicon Data spent two years building the pricing and performance data needed to support a compute futures market before one existed. The new funding will help establish common benchmarks across the compute ecosystem, giving buyers, sellers, exchanges, and financial institutions shared reference points. Remote Hire With Us: Menlo Talent helps technology companies hire exceptional remote talent from India. Build your team with carefully curated engineers, product leaders, designers, GTM professionals, and more. Learn More At: https://www.menlotimes.com/menlo-talent