Options Execution Quantitative Researcher

Department: Technology

Location: Chicago, IL

Description

Find the edge. Build the algo. Win the execution.

The mission is simple: deliver best-in-class execution — for our strategies and our customers'. You’ll study market microstructure, analyze execution performance, and build models that improve how orders are routed and filled—refining both our internal algorithms and collaborating with clients to enhance theirs.

This is a high-ownership role in a rapidly growing execution business. You’ll work with large trading datasets and complex market behavior to identify opportunities that improve execution quality, while helping shape the research agenda and where we invest next. Working closely with traders, sales, engineers, and researchers, you’ll turn those insights into production improvements and see the results quickly.

If you enjoy applying rigorous quantitative research to real market problems and want the autonomy to shape how a business executes – we want to talk to you.

What You’ll Do

• Research and develop options execution strategies for single-leg and multi-leg option trades.
• Analyze transaction costs, slippage, and fill quality across strategies and venues
• Develop and refine execution algorithms — VWAP, TWAP, liquidity-seeking, and beyond
• Build models to estimate market impact, fill probability, and optimal order placement
• Partner with engineers to move models into production trading systems
• Design Python and SQL workflows for analyzing large-scale trading datasets
• Identify new areas of opportunity and drive the research direction as the business grows
  
  

What We’re Looking For

• Strong quantitative background in statistics, mathematics, computer science, or a related field
• Hands-on experience with options trading, including familiarity with options pricing models, Greeks, and option executions.
• Experience training models on time-series or event-driven data where feature engineering and leakage prevention are non-trivial
• Proficiency in C#, Python and SQL
• Strong analytical thinking and a bias toward solving real problems end-to-end
• Ability to communicate findings clearly and collaborate across trading, engineering, and research teams
• Experience building dashboards or visualizations (Tableau or similar) is a plus
  
  

Why Join Us

Our flat organizational structure promotes teamwork across the Firm and offers easy access to senior staff. While we work exceptionally well as a team in the office, our bonds are further strengthened through company events, activities and giving back. Volleyball, soccer, hockey, 5K runs, picnic, parties, and trivia nights provide friendly competition and build better relationships. By getting out of our usual environment and doing out-of-the-ordinary things together, we foster creativity and broaden our imaginations to accomplish new challenges.

Benefits

• Highly competitive salary & bonus opportunity
• Generous paid time off and flexible scheduling
• 100% coverage of medical, dental, vision, life, and disability benefits for single coverage
• Generous Paid Parental Leave
• Retirement Plans: 401K and Roth 401K
• Profit sharing plan
• Long- and short-term disability
  
  

Additional Perks:

• Free breakfast and lunch from our in-house kitchen with rotating menus (including snacks!)
• On-site gym with a subsidized membership
• Frequent company outings
• Opportunity to give back to organizations that help individuals in need in the Chicagoland area
  
  

Professional Development:

• In-house education team – classes and resources are offered for continuous learning opportunities
• Mentorship Program through your first six months of employment
  
  

The base compensation range for this role is approximately $100,000-$140,000 contingent on experience. WEX's total compensation model includes base salary and an annual discretionary bonus.