Senior Member of Research Staff, Technical Lead (London)

Voleon is a technology company that applies state-of-the-art AI and machine learning techniques to real-world problems in finance. For nearly two decades, we have led our industry and worked at the frontier of applying AI/ML to investment management. We have become a multibillion-dollar asset manager, and we have ambitious goals for the future. Your colleagues will include internationally recognized experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning research as well as highly experienced finance and technology professionals. In addition to our enriching and collegial working environment, we offer highly competitive compensation and benefits packages, technology talks by our experts, a beautiful modern office, daily catered lunches, and more.

As a Senior Member of Research Staff and a Technical Lead, you will work at the forefront of modern statistical machine learning applied to financial market prediction and portfolio optimization. You will carry out your own independent research as well as guide your team through the entire research cycle: from research idea generation, exploratory work, scoping of projects, through implementation and iteration, to rigorous evaluation of research outcomes and eventual productization. This role can be very high leverage for the right candidate.

Founded by two leading scientists, Voleon supports a culture of curiosity, collegiality, and creativity. We do not silo our teams, and you will enjoy a healthy work-life balance while tackling hard problems with the rest of us. The behavior of financial markets is noisy and violates a number of classical statistical assumptions, and we’ve spent over a decade pioneering scientific advances in this domain. Despite the complexity, successful outcomes are immediate and unambiguous.

Responsibilities

• Lead and conduct original research on predictive models, novel data sets, risk management, and portfolio optimization
• Develop a rich understanding of Voleon's domain, challenges, and methodologies
• Define the research agenda of a research team and oversee its execution
• Establish and maintain standards of scientific rigor, excellence, expediency, and correctness
• Mentor, coach, and provide technical guidance to other Research staff
• Communicate and collaborate with stakeholders, facilitate discussions around complex issues
• Keep up to date on the latest academic research to identify novel approaches for application to our domain
• Collaborate with engineering support teams to deploy successful research projects to production
• Contribute to Voleon's efforts to recruit exceptional talent

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience directing research projects and mentoring colleagues, with a demonstrated ability to balance hands-on individual contributor technical work with team leadership
• Experience building and growing research teams in a collaborative environment
• Expertise in modern statistical methods, machine learning, and their application
• Strong mathematical foundations (evidenced by e.g. publication record, graduate coursework, or competition placement)
• Clarity of thought and an ability to communicate complex technical issues simply and unambiguously
• Ability to make well-reasoned decisions, to anticipate research outcomes, and to pose and validate hypotheses
• Capability to run multiple projects simultaneously and to operate large-scale compute infrastructure
• A penchant for prototyping numerical software
• Interest in financial applications is essential, but prior finance industry experience is not a prerequisite
• Ph.D. level coursework is required, and a Ph.D. degree in a relevant field is preferred

The Voleon Group is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.