Quant Risk Analyst

Polymarket•New York, NY

About The Position

Polymarket is building a regulated US exchange and is hiring a Quant Risk Manager to establish the risk function from the ground up. This role involves designing the models, frameworks, and systems to protect the exchange as it launches perpetuals and traditional commodity derivatives into a live market. The US Exchange team is small and fast-paced, requiring close collaboration with engineers, product leads, and compliance to translate quantitative risk concepts into real infrastructure. This includes writing code, making policy decisions, and taking ownership of outcomes related to margin design, stress testing, and default risk. The Quant Risk Manager will be responsible for determining how exposure is measured and contained, how the guarantee fund is protected, and how the exchange performs under stress scenarios.

Requirements

Hands-on experience managing derivatives or futures risk, either at an exchange, clearinghouse, or trading firm where real money was on the line.
Quantitative risk management background with direct ownership of model development, not just consumption of outputs from a research team.
Strong financial modeling skills in Python. You write clean, production-quality code and move fast.
Comfort working with AI tools across the full development cycle. You use them to ship better work faster, not as a shortcut around understanding.
Deep familiarity with exchange mechanics: order books, market making dynamics, margin and collateral management, position limits, and liquidation.
Working knowledge of CFTC regulations for designated contract markets, including reporting requirements, capital rules, and conduct standards.
Ability to operate without a large team behind you. You can scope a problem, build a solution, and defend your assumptions to stakeholders who will push back.

Nice To Haves

Experience with guarantee fund design or default waterfall mechanics at a clearing organization.
Background in prediction markets, crypto derivatives, or other non-traditional asset classes where standard risk frameworks needed to be adapted.
Prior experience standing up a risk function or platform from scratch, not just inheriting one.

Responsibilities

Build quantitative risk models for perpetuals and commodity derivatives, covering margin requirements, position limits, and tail risk across normal and stressed market conditions.
Design and maintain the exchange's stress testing framework, including scenario construction, loss estimation, and regular calibration as market conditions evolve.
Develop default risk models that determine how the guarantee fund is sized, structured, and triggered in a default event.
Partner with engineers to build a real-time risk monitoring platform that surfaces exposure, breaches, and anomalies as they happen during live trading.
Translate risk model outputs into actionable exchange policy, including margin schedules, liquidation logic, and market maker requirements.
Own CFTC-related risk reporting and capital obligations, working with legal and compliance to ensure the exchange meets its regulatory requirements without flying blind.
Identify gaps in the current risk architecture and prioritize what gets built next, based on where actual exposure is growing fastest.