Quant Developer - Research Engineering
About the job
- Strong production-level Python skills, including fluency with NumPy and pandas, vectorization, and profiling.
- Working proficiency in C++.
- Solid quantitative foundations, particularly in statistics, including probability, regression, and time series, with the judgment to distinguish signal from noise.
- Strong software design skills and hands-on experience building and operating data pipelines at scale.
- Ability to work directly with quantitative researchers and traders and translate an ambiguous research need into a concrete design.
- Partner with quantitative researchers and traders to understand their research questions and design the data, tooling, and compute needed to answer them.
- Build, operate, and optimize the pipelines and execution frameworks behind research and backtesting.
- Take research prototypes into production with the reliability, reproducibility, and observability production requires.
- Own foundational shared datasets used across multiple desks, including their quality and timeliness.
- Profile and optimize performance-critical numerical code, balancing runtime against compute and storage cost.
- Migrate existing research pipelines onto modern data platforms and improve the process for subsequent migrations.
- Build evaluation tooling that lets researchers judge model performance.
- Collaborate across the wider data and technology organization to improve the platform used by every desk.
- Experience in options trading, market making, or another trading environment.
- Experience with backtesting, simulation, or research-platform infrastructure.
- Hands-on experience with a major cloud provider and/or high-performance computing (HPC) managers.
- Experience with Apache Iceberg or similar technology.
- Experience with high-volume market data capture.
- C++ template metaprogramming experience.
About the company
Chicago Trading Company trades options with its own money, standing ready to buy and sell contracts tied to stocks, stock indexes, commodities, and interest rates so other investors can trade when they need to. It began on Chicago's trading floors in US index options and became one of the firms that exchanges such as Cboe and CME appoint to keep prices quoted in their markets. Its traders, quantitative researchers, and engineers build pricing models and automated systems that quote prices and manage risk, and the firm earns money from the small gap between the prices at which it buys and sells. Five options traders founded it in 1995, and it is based in Chicago.
Company Size
501-1,000
Company Stage
Debt Financing
Total Funding
$300M
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois
Founded
1995
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Pay tracks results: CTC London's 2025 trading income rose 78% and key staff bonuses nearly doubled, per August 2026 accounts.
- Entry pay is high: CTC pays 2027 graduate traders and engineers a $200,000 base and summer interns $16,500 a month.
- Engineers drive its plan: CTC aims to automate more trading, and 13 of 24 openings in October 2026 are engineering.
What critics are saying
- Cuts hit London: CTC London's August 2026 filing shows office staff halved to 18 and £2 million paid in severance.
- A bigger rival keeps growing: in March 2026, Dutch market maker Optiver reported trading income up 30% to €4.6 billion.
- No Asia office means night shifts: CTC's Asia-hours options traders work 4pm to 1am Chicago time, Sunday through Thursday.
What makes Chicago Trading Company unique
- Technologists sit at the top: CTO Josh Schubkegel became co-CEO in January 2026, alongside 20-year CTC veteran Lauren Rauch.
- It backs venues needing market makers: CTC Ventures' 22 investments include stock exchange MEMX and sports-betting exchange Sporttrade.
- Non-traders get flexibility: CTC's job posts say every team except Trading follows a hybrid workplace model.
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Benefits
- Health Insurance
- Parental Leave
- Wellness Program
- Flexible Work Hours