DeFi Quant Research Intern - Digital Assets Market Making
Keyrock is a crypto market maker providing algorithmic liquidity, OTC trading, derivatives, and asset management services to institutions across centralized and decentralized venues.
Funding history
About Keyrock
Keyrock provides institutional digital asset trading services through proprietary algorithmic technology deployed across centralized and decentralized exchanges. Users can access market making, over-the-counter block trades, options structures for hedging and yield, and managed fund strategies. The firm operates across multiple regulated jurisdictions including Belgium, the UK, Switzerland, France, and the US.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will research on-chain market structure, execution, liquidity, and pricing across decentralized markets. You will analyse blockchain and market data, run backtests and simulations, and build Python tools and data pipelines for research and monitoring. You will assess the effects of protocol mechanics, gas, slippage, latency, and MEV on strategy performance, support live strategies through post-trade analysis, and present clear findings, risks, and recommendations.
Requirements
- Pursuing or recently completed a degree in mathematics, computer science, engineering, physics, quantitative finance, or a related field
- Proficiency in Python for data analysis
- Comfort with SQL, Git, and command-line workflows
- Working understanding of blockchain transactions, state changes, gas, blocks, consensus, finality, and smart-contract interactions
- Knowledge of AMMs, concentrated liquidity, swaps, liquidity provision, oracles, liquidations, and decentralized execution
- Understanding of MEV, transaction ordering, block construction, arbitrage, liquidation, backrunning, and sandwiching
- Hands-on DeFi experience beyond coursework or social media
- Ability to assess fees, gas, latency, slippage, adverse selection, and changing market conditions
- Ability to structure ambiguous problems, test assumptions, and communicate findings clearly in English
Responsibilities
- Research on-chain market structure, liquidity, price formation, participant behaviour, and execution across decentralized markets
- Study the effects of protocol mechanics, transaction ordering, gas, slippage, latency, and MEV on execution quality and strategy performance
- Formulate and evaluate trading hypotheses using blockchain data, market data, backtests, and simulations
- Build reusable Python tools and data pipelines for research, monitoring, and performance analysis
- Analyse relationships between centralized and decentralized markets for pricing, hedging, and risk implications
- Support live strategies through monitoring, post-trade analysis, and investigation of unexpected performance
- Present findings, assumptions, limitations, risks, and recommended next steps clearly
Benefits
- Accommodation provided for all or part of the internship
Hiring Process
Interview with a Talent Acquisition representative → interview with the Hiring Manager → recruitment challenge