Varsity Holdings – Crypto Quant Researcher (Strategy Development & Data)

* What You Will Do

* Strategy Research & Development (Core)

• Research, design, and test systematic trading strategies across:

  • Crypto spot, perps, futures

  • Intraday, swing, and statistical arbitrage horizons

• Turn hypotheses into measurable signals

• Build:

  • Entry/exit logic

  • Position sizing logic

  • Risk filters & regime filters

• Perform:

  • Robust backtests

  • Out-of-sample testing

  • Parameter stability & overfitting checks

• Analyze PnL drivers, failure modes, and edge decay

* Data Collection & Data Engineering (Equally Important)

• Build and maintain data pipelines for:

  • OHLCV (multi-timeframe)

  • Trades, orderbook, funding, open interest

  • Liquidations, on-chain metrics, flows

• Work with:

  • Exchange APIs (Binance, Bybit, OKX, etc.)

  • Flat files / time-series databases

• Responsibilities:

  • Data cleaning

  • Timestamp alignment

  • Corporate-action-like adjustments (forks, symbol changes, contract rolls)

  • Outlier detection

  • Missing data handling

• Build research-grade datasets, not garbage-in-garbage-out.

* Feature Engineering & Factor Research

• Design alpha factors from:

  • Price action

  • Volume, order flow, liquidity

  • Volatility, funding, basis, positioning

  • Cross-asset and cross-timeframe relationships

• Build:

  • Single-bar features

  • Multi-bar structural features

  • Regime and context variables

• Analyze:

  • Feature stability

  • Feature interactions

  • Feature decay

* Research Infrastructure & Tooling

• Improve:

  • Backtesting framework

  • Research workflow

  • Experiment tracking

• Build tools for:

  • Fast iteration

  • Batch experiments

  • Strategy comparison

  • Portfolio-level simulations

* What We’re Looking For

Must-Have

• Strong quantitative / analytical thinking

• Strong Python (pandas, numpy, vectorization, not for-loops everywhere)

• Comfortable with:

  • Time-series data

  • Backtesting

  • Statistical analysis

• Experience handling messy real-world data

• Able to think in:

  • Signals

  • Distributions

  • Expected value

  • Regimes

• Understands overfitting is the enemy

Big Plus

• Experience in:

  • Crypto market microstructure

  • Order book data

  • On-chain data

  • HFT / intraday systems

• C++ experience

• SQL / ClickHouse / time-series DBs

• Experience building research pipelines, not just notebooks

• Has actually run strategies or done serious backtests before

* Background

• Degree in:

  • Math / CS / Engineering / Physics / Stats / Econ or similar

• But honestly:

  • If you’re good, we don’t care about paper credentials.

* What You Get

• Work on real capital, real strategies, real impact

• Direct influence on PnL

• Access to:

  • Full research stack

  • Large datasets

  • Serious compute

• Competitive compensation + performance upside

• No politics. No fluff. Just build edge.

* Who Should NOT Apply

• If you:

  • Want to do “crypto research” by reading Twitter

  • Think indicators = strategies

  • Can’t tell the difference between backtest and reality

  • Want hand-holding and step-by-step instructions

This is not that job.

* Interview Process

• Discussion of:

  • Past research or projects

  • How you think about alpha

• Practical task:

  • Data cleaning / feature extraction / small research problem

• We care about how you think, not buzzwords.