Senior Researcher (HFT, Market Making, Crypto)

We trade the world's most volatile markets and make them more efficient.
Koton is a boutique, proprietary trading firm and a top-tier market maker on the world's largest crypto exchange, quoting across roughly 90% of trading pairs on both spot and futures. Our core is high-frequency market making, where the speed and cost-efficiency of execution decide the outcome. Around that core we run further strategies built on the same low-latency infrastructure. Binance is where our depth sits today, and we are actively expanding to other venues.
We build our own technology and run these strategies at scale, all with a small, tight-knit team where individual work is directly visible in the results. Most of our team sits in Brno in Czech Republic.
We're looking for a senior researcher to own trading strategies end-to-end, from first hypothesis to live PnL. The work comes with genuine autonomy, real capital behind it, and a feedback loop tight enough to tell you quickly whether your edge is real.

What you'll do

• Design and iterate crypto trading strategies
• Identify signals in order book dynamics, analyse trade flow, fill behavior and short-term price evolution
• State hypotheses, validate them on real historical data
• Design solutions, collaborate with dev team to deploy into production, analyze feedback from trading team
• Refine performance and PnL metrics, perform post-trade analysis and continuously review trading logic

Who you are

• You have a detailed understanding of a number of trading strategies that were successful in a live HFT environment, either your own design or a long-term contribution to strategies design in a team
• You own the full loop: idea → analysis, validation → live PoC → iteration
• You communicate clearly and can explain your reasoning to various stakeholders
• You can work happily and efficiently in a remote setup long-term or you are happy to relocate

Bonus points

• Direct HFT experience in crypto and on exchanges (a real plus, though not required)
• Hands-on cross-exchange arbitrage
• Experience with DEX strategies and on-chain venues
• You think in terms of edge decay, latency sensitivity, and the trade-off between inventory risk and spread capture
• Expert Python, SQL, advanced .net

We expect strong evidence across several of these:

• A career across several trading firms including a research-focused role
• HFT or market making in crypto or traditional markets
• Proprietary trading firms or quantitative trading teams
• Order book mechanics
• Execution, slippage, and adverse selection
• Short-term alpha generation
• Cross exchange arbitrage
• Strong data skills in Python or similar
• Comfortable preparing and analyzing large datasets
• Disciplined about backtesting, evaluation, and risk management

Note: This is a senior, remote, individual-contributor role. We expect you to be comfortable and effective working in a remote environment.

• Paid time off to actually switch off
• Fully catered office: all-day snacks, daily lunch, coffee and drinks on us
• Work-from-home flexibility for non-remote roles
• Training and development to keep sharpening your edge
• Performance bonuses tied to results
• Relocation support for candidates moving to Czechia
• Pick your own hardware, top-spec kit, no IT-catalogue limits

Annual salary: This depends on your experience, the level of ownership you take on, and other factors. We believe in paying fairly, with a base salary typically ranging from 90,000 to 160,000 EUR per year, and we're always open to a conversation. We like smart people and want them to feel appreciated and to enjoy the work they do here.