Lead Alpha Researcher, Systematic Equities

IMC is seeking a Lead Alpha Researcher to join our Systematic Equities team in London. This is a senior hands-on research and leadership role focused on developing and scaling alpha generation predictive modelling and machine learning capabilities across our global equities business.

You will lead a key part of the European alpha research team managing researchers and driving a portfolio of high-impact alpha initiatives from idea generation through production deployment. You will work as part of a closely coordinated global alpha initiative helping to set priorities develop researchers elevate research quality and scale high-impact ideas across regions.

Working closely with traders researchers and developers globally you will drive the discovery validation and deployment of new sources of alpha that improve production trading performance.

Our Systematic Equities business benefits from significant advantages in market access execution quality global reach and technology. The continued growth of machine learning and data-driven research creates opportunities to unlock these advantages and tackle some of the most impactful problems in systematic trading.

IMC competes and wins as a team with open idea sharing and collaboration across disciplines desks and offices.

• Take a leading role in research development and deployment of alpha signals and predictive models contributing to a globally coordinated alpha effort across equities markets.
• Manage grow and develop a core part of the European alpha research team.
• Help define and prioritise the alpha research agenda.
• Deliver measurable improvements in production trading performance through robust research disciplined validation and close collaboration with trading teams.
• Establish and uphold best practices for research methodology validation reproducibility and deployment across the alpha research team.
• Foster a research culture built on scientific rigour intellectual curiosity open idea sharing and continuous improvement.
• Drive the development of scalable research tools datasets and modelling frameworks that increase team productivity.

• Masters or PhD in Machine Learning Statistics Mathematics Computer Science Engineering Physics or another quantitative discipline.
• 5 years of experience developing systematic intraday horizon trading strategies predictive models and alpha signals.
• Demonstrated track record of generating profitable value-adding and orthogonal signals in a production trading environment.
• Experience managing mentoring or leading researchers in a high-performance research environment.
• Demonstrated ability to influence research direction prioritise opportunities and drive impactful research outcomes.
• Strong practical experience applying machine learning techniques to prediction problems with a clear understanding of overfitting risks and robust model validation.
• Deep understanding of statistics experimental design hypothesis testing and research methodology.
• Strong programming skills in Python.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work effectively across research trading engineering and global office locations.

About Us

IMC is a research-driven trading firm where quantitative modeling machine learning and engineering shape how modern markets are traded. A stabilizing force in markets since 1989 we provide liquidity across trading venues delivering the best outcome in value and risk management to investors. Using our own technology and capital we build proprietary systems and algorithms that operate across global markets. Our researchers traders and engineers work as a collective combining rapid experimentation advanced infrastructure and real-time feedback to turn insight into execution and execution into advantage.