Junior Quantitative Analyst – Horse Racing

We have a fantastic new opportunity to join our team at Smartodds as a Horse Racing Junior Quantitative Analyst. Based in North London, Smartodds provides in-depth research and analysis on sporting events around the world, supported by world-class, bespoke software platforms. We are proud of our collaborative and dynamic culture, grounded in our core values of Boldness, Open-mindedness, Ownership, and Togetherness. We are a supportive and collaborative team – our environment is open, inclusive, and focused on doing great work together.

About the role

As a member of the Quant Team, you will join an exciting environment, predicting outcomes of professional sports on behalf of our clients. We focus on football, baseball, basketball, cricket, tennis, American football, ice hockey, horse racing and golf. As a Horse Racing Junior Quant Analyst, you will assist more senior quant analysts with research on statistical models applied to horse racing, as well as support other areas, such as execution research and analysis, from time to time. You will also play a key role in developing and supporting the reliable production of high-quality predictions for our clients.

• Assist the Team Head and/or Senior Quants in carrying out and executing the relevant research and model development projects.
• Support Smartodds’ clients in their pricing tasks by developing, maintaining and supporting the mathematical libraries behind our range of tools and models.
• Perform statistical analysis of datasets, testing well-defined hypotheses and effectively communicating results to the various stakeholders, including Smartodds’ clients.
• Contribute to the development of our core programming libraries.
• Attend at least one event to support your professional development as a sports quant analyst on an annual basis: conferences, courses, meet-ups, networking events; in-person or remotely; on sports, statistics, machine learning, gambling, etc.

Skills & Experiences Required

• MSc in Statistics or a related field (e.g., Data Science or Mathematics), or another field (such as Computer Science, Engineering, Finance, etc) with some experience in statistics.
• A previous professional experience in a role with a strong statistical element, demonstrating skills beyond those acquired in your studies.
• Experience with programming and a willingness to learn and work in R.
• Demonstrated passion for working in sports modelling, evidenced by personal projects, MSc project in a related area or statistical analyses of sports or teams.
• Strong interest in ongoing training and personal development.
• Desire to learn new technologies and programming languages.
• Ability to work in the UK.

Preferred

• A strong interest in horse racing, demonstrated by previous attempts to model outcomes or analyse data.
• Good understanding of sports betting markets.
• An interest in and ability to understand statistical and machine-learning predictive models and libraries (GBM, Torch, CNN, LSTM, NLP, GNN, etc).
• Experience with any additional programming languages (Python, C++, Julia, …).
• Familiarity with database technologies, e.g., SQL, MongoDB, Redis, Postgres.
• Experience with version control, code reviews and merge requests.
• Experience with CI/CD, and test-driven development (TDD).

From Day One

• 30 days holiday (in addition to bank & public holidays).
• In-house chef.
• In-house masseuse.
• Team sporting events.
• 25% discount on Brentford Football Club merchandise.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Interest-free travel season ticket loan.
• Offsite trips.

After 3 Months

• Pension – Employer Contribution starting at 5.5%, and employee starting at 2.5%.
• Income protection – 75% of salary (subject to terms & conditions).
• Private Medical Insurance – including coverage of any excess payment.
• Life Assurance (4 x times earnings at time of death).
• Enhanced Company Sick Pay.
• A discretionary annual bonus.

After 2 Years

• Increase in employer pension contribution to 6% (with a minimum employee contribution of 3%).
• Enhanced Maternity Pay.
• Enhanced Paternity Pay.

After 4 Years

• Increase in employer pension contribution to 7% (with a minimum employee contribution of 3.5%).

Smartodds is a privately-owned company providing statistical research and sports modelling services to customers, including professional gamblers and professional football teams. Our employees are based in North London with a number of consultants based globally. Founded in 2004, Smartodds has a proven record of providing exceptional services to its clients. We are a growing company and work in an exciting and fast-paced industry of which we are a market leader. Smartodds’ achievements are built around the talents of its employees. We like to think that despite the diverse background of the people who work at Smartodds, there is one thing we have in common: commitment and job satisfaction. As part of a fantastic team, Smartodds’ employees enjoy the opportunity to be the very best at what they do, contributing to the success of the company on a daily basis.