Quantitative Researcher

About the Role

Polymarket is launching perpetual futures, and this role is the mathematical foundation the exchange runs on. You'll be the first dedicated quant on the perps product, working directly with the engineering team to build the pricing and risk infrastructure from the ground up. Your mandate covers the core mechanics of the exchange: how mark prices are constructed, how funding rates are designed and calibrated, and how margin parameters are set when new assets get listed. The liquidation engine, the funding settlements, the risk limits on every listed asset — all of it depends on the work you do in this role.

This is a high-ownership, low-handoff role. You will move from research to specification to production code, and you will monitor what you build in live markets. We are looking for someone who finds that accountability motivating, not exhausting — someone who has been in that seat before and knows what it takes to get it right.

What You'll Do

• Design and maintain the methodology for aggregating spot prices across multiple external venues, including outlier removal, source weighting, and staleness handling, so the mark price the liquidation engine depends on is always reliable

• Build and calibrate the funding rate formula from first principles: premium calculation, interest rate components, clamping logic, and settlement cadence, tuned to keep perp prices anchored to spot across normal and stressed market conditions

• Run the quantitative analysis for every new asset listing, determining initial margin, maintenance margin, leverage tiers, and max open interest based on historical volatility and liquidity data