Quantitative Analyst – Execution Research
Based in North London, Smartodds provides in-depth research and analysis on sporting events around the world, supported by world-class, bespoke software platforms. We are proud of our collaborative and dynamic culture, grounded in our core values of Boldness, Open-mindedness, Ownership, and Togetherness. We are a supportive and collaborative team - our environment is open, inclusive, and focused on doing great work together.
About the role
As a member of the Quant Team, you will join an exciting environment predicting outcomes of professional sports on behalf of our clients. We focus on football, baseball, basketball, cricket, tennis, American football, ice hockey, horse racing and golf.
In this role, you will join the execution research team and will be focusing on devising automated betting strategies using our predictive models and algorithms used to market make / seed different bookmakers, market exchanges and predictions markets.
Market making strategies, liquidity, price, risk, order book, counterparties, market trend, trading signal, optimal time of placing bets, will be your topic of research, in the context of both pre match and in-running trading.
As it becomes increasingly important for the business to understand the information provided from clients through their actions, the role might also include analysing betting patterns and market behaviour.
This role combines rigorous statistical and mathematical modelling with production engineering. You will take models from research through to deployment, writing well-tested, documented code that integrates into our internal libraries. The atmosphere is collaborative and academic - peer reviews, research talks, and further education opportunities - but unlike academia, the market performance provides immediate feedback on model quality. This makes the job challenging but also very exciting.
You will have plenty of autonomy to develop your models from idea to code to validation to (hopefully) release. However, this autonomy operates within a structured framework: established coding patterns, weekly check-ins, high test coverage, and strict reproducibility standards.
While we are open to applications from anyone who meets the minimum requirements, we would be especially keen to hear from applicants with substantial market making experience and a demonstrable passion for betting markets.
Key Responsibilities
- Contribute to identifying promising research directions; ensure research is carried out to the highest standard
- Develop betting and market making strategies for both pre-match and in-play
- Contribute to discussions and efforts to identify weaknesses and potential improvements in existing betting strategies and / or models across all sports
- Support Smartodds' clients in their pricing tasks by developing, maintaining and supporting the mathematical libraries behind our range of tools, models and software that delivers model predictions into production
- Perform statistical analysis of datasets, testing well-defined hypotheses and effectively communicating results to various stakeholders
- Potentially support and lead more juniors' members of the team
Skills & Experience
Required
Technical
- Either MSc in Statistics or a related field (e.g., Data Science or Mathematics), or another field (such as Computer Science, Engineering, Finance, etc) with some experience in statistics and 3+ years of work experience in a relevant role (e.g. sports quantitative analyst for a betting syndicate, a bookmaker or betting exchange); or a PhD or equivalent in Statistics or a related field (e.g., Data Science or Mathematics), or another field (such as Computer Science, Engineering, Finance, etc) with some experience in statistics
- Extensive experience of probabilistic and statistical modelling
- Model diagnostics: Ability to evaluate predictive model performance using appropriate metrics, and to quantify and communicate predictive uncertainty
- Strong programming skills in a high-level language such as R or Python.
- Write production-quality code not just analysis scripts
- Demonstrated passion for working in sports betting
Working style
- Collaborative team player, with a constructive approach to receiving and applying feedback
- Understands the importance of reproducible research and properly tested code
- Thorough and reliable, with a verification mindset
- Ability to work autonomously while communicating proactively any blockers when needed
- Good organisation and communication skills, including the ability to coordinate work across teams
- Ability to communicate results to those with and without specialist knowledge
- Ability to work in the UK
Preferred
- Experience in developing and automating market making strategies on betting exchanges / financial markets
- Experience implementing automated trading systems and algorithms
- Good understanding of sports betting markets
- Experience in customer segmentation and profiling (ideally in context of a bookmaker)
- Experience with and/or knowledge of Bayesian models, state space models, filtering and smoothing, computational statistics and approximate inference methods
- Experience with and/or knowledge of machine and statistical learning, deep neural networks, feature engineering, reinforcement learning, dynamic optimisation and optimal control
- Experience working with large datasets
- Knowledge of and interest in football or other sports
- Strong software development foundations
- Experience with any additional programming languages (such as C++ or Julia)
- Familiarity with database technologies, e.g., SQL, MongoDB, Redis, Postgres
- Experience with version control, code reviews and merge requests
From Day One
- 30 days holiday (in addition to bank & public holidays)
- In-house chef*
- In-house masseuse*
- Team sporting events
- 25% discount on Brentford Football Club merchandise
- Cycle to work scheme
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Interest-free travel season ticket loan
- Offsite trips
After 3 Months
- Pension - Employer Contribution starting at 5.5%, and employee starting at 2.5%
- Income protection – 75% of salary (subject to terms & conditions)
- Dedicated time for professional development - conferences, courses, meet-ups, networking events (at least one annually)
- Private Medical Insurance - including coverage of any excess payment
- Health Cash Plan via Medicash
- Life Assurance (4 x times earnings at time of death)
- Enhanced Company Sick Pay
- A discretionary annual bonus
- Increase in Employer Pension to 6% (to a minimum employee contribution of 3%)
- Enhanced Maternity Pay
- Enhanced Paternity Pay
- Increase in Employer’s Pension to 7% (to a minimum employee contribution of 3.5%)
If this sounds like the right fit, we would love to hear from you. Please submit your CV and a cover letter explaining your interest in football analytics and highlighting relevant technical experience