QFEX
Research Engineer Overview
| Company Name | QFEX |
| Job Role | Research Engineer |
| Qualifications | Not Specified |
| Category | IT Jobs |
| Job Type | Full Time |
| Location | London |
This role sits at the intersection of research, exchange engineering, and operational tooling for a company building a new kind of perpetual futures exchange for traditional financial assets. The business is focused on making markets available around the clock, with high leverage, and on replacing legacy exchange, clearing, and brokerage infrastructure with a simpler and more efficient system. The team is small, technically strong, and backed by well-known investors, including Y Combinator.
What you would do
- Take ownership of research across exchange design, market microstructure, venue latency, and exchange data, then convert that work into concrete improvements to the matching engine, margin system, and fee model.
- Build the internal operational tooling that keeps the exchange functioning smoothly, including dashboards for risk and margin, tools for simulating liquidations, market surveillance systems, and reconciliation pipelines used by operations staff and institutional clients.
- Help steer the technical direction of the engineering team by evaluating tools, setting coding standards, and contributing to architectural decisions as the platform scales.
- Design and improve services that are fault-tolerant, extremely low latency, and always available, while also creating load tests and chaos testing suites and tuning systems until tail latency is consistently dependable.
- Contribute to the companyâs engineering culture and hiring standards by helping establish expectations around testing, metrics, reliability, and graceful failure handling.
What the company is looking for
- A STEM background from a university that is highly respected in the candidateâs home country, with examples given such as Oxbridge or Imperial in the UK, HYMPS in the US, or a top IIT in India.
- Strong hands-on experience with Python and SQL, plus familiarity with common data science libraries such as pandas and numpy.
- At least three years of experience working closely with real-time production exchanges, perpetual futures venues, or high-frequency trading systems, whether through building them, operating them, or working with them in depth.
- A strong commitment to building a responsible engineering culture centered on tests, metrics, and graceful degradation.
- Excellent judgment and trustworthiness, including the ability to make decisions in minutes rather than days.
- Additional experience that would be especially valuable includes fintech, exchange, or low-latency work; building research or operational tooling; using high-performance languages like Rust, C, or C++; and deep experience with Kubernetes or infrastructure-as-code.
Compensation and perks
- Salary range of $100,000 to $150,000.
- Equity range of 0.10% to 0.50%.
- UK visa sponsorship is available, but only after one year.
- Optional access to a New York City office.
- Lunch allowance and regular company events.
- The chance to grow with a highly technical fintech team while also helping shape standards and culture.
- 25 days of holiday plus bank holidays.
Interview process
- Initial conversations with the two founders, each lasting about 30 minutes, focused on the companyâs vision and the candidateâs background.
- Two technical interviews, each around one hour, involving verbal technical questions and a data science task.
- The company says it moves quickly and usually makes an offer decision within 24 hours.
About the company
The company is building a 24/7 exchange for traditional financial markets, allowing trading in US equities, commodities, and FX pairs with leverage of up to 100x. The product emphasizes user experience, including brokerless market access, smooth integration with traditional payment rails, and ultra-efficient perpetual futures across asset classes. The founders come from quantitative and engineering backgrounds at firms such as Citadel and Tower Research, and the companyâs long-term ambition is to reshape the exchange and clearing industry.
The team is based in London and is small, with around ten people. The founders are Annanay Kapila and Joshua Wharton. The company is active and was founded in 2025 as part of Y Combinatorâs P25 batch.
How to apply
Applicants can apply directly through the startup jobs listing to connect with the founders and move into the interview process.
Degree Requirement: Not Specified
Visa Sponsorship Promising
To apply for this job please visit www.ycombinator.com.
