HFT Researcher | 42.com

About 42.com

42.com is a proprietary hedge fund where technology is the core advantage. The company is rethinking financial market forecasting using modern systems, new hardware paradigms, and frontier AI. The fund operates tightly with an internal AI Research Lab — together they design and own the full stack from research ideas to production trading systems.

The research team more like a classic IT/research company than a traditional trading firm: frequent group work, cross-functional projects, and open communication.

42.com is now launching a new HFT direction and building a dedicated research group of 3–4 people from the ground up, led by an experienced Research Lead. They are looking for HFT Researchers to join and shape this effort from day one.

What you are expected to do

• Research, prototype, and iterate systematic short-horizon trading models across liquid financial markets

• Build and evaluate predictive features from granular market and external data with a focus on validity and out-of-sample performance

• Optimize model and execution parameters under real-world constraints (risk, capital efficiency, operational costs, and performance stability)

• Work with high-resolution market data and derived datasets; develop reliable features and discover new functional dependencies from empirical data

• Perform rigorous backtesting and simulation reflecting real-world trading costs, operational constraints, and exchange-specific behaviors

• Collaborate with software engineers to translate research into production-ready strategies; participate in live monitoring, post-trade analysis, and continuous improvement

• Train ML models, research features, and work with market data as part of ongoing feature engineering

What you need to succeed

• 1+ year of experience in research for HFT as a researcher, quant researcher

• Strong ML fundamentals: Python, ML frameworks, ML theory, statistics, mathematics

• Understanding of market microstructure and exchange mechanics

• Solid grounding in probability, statistics, and optimization

• An instinct for writing computationally efficient, clear, and optimized code

• Proactive and initiative-driven

• Comfortable working closely with a team in a collaborative, research-oriented environment

• English Proficiency

What you get

• Greenfield opportunity: Shape a brand-new HFT direction within a tech-first hedge fund backed by a strong AI Research Lab.

• Freedom and ownership: Define problems, test ideas, and push them into live trading systems. Full ownership of the research-to-production pipeline.

• Culture: Collaborative, research-oriented environment: frequent group work, cross-functional projects, and open communication.

• Flexibility: Remote-friendly, distributed team. Employment contracts are available in Cyprus, Dubai, the Netherlands, and Canada. B2B contracts are also possible.