Quantitative Analyst

We have a fantastic new opportunity to join our team at Smartodds as Quantitative Analyst. Based in North London, Smartodds specialise in providing in-depth research and analysis on numerous sporting events all over the globe and producing world-class bespoke software platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and collaborative employee culture, which is deeply rooted in our core values of Boldness, Open-mindedness, Ownership, and Togetherness. This foundation not only drives our success but also fosters a rewarding and supportive environment for our team.   As a Quantitative Analyst, you will be a key player in an exciting environment, predicting outcomes of professional sports on behalf of our clients. We focus on football, American football, baseball, basketball, cricket, golf, ice hockey, and tennis. We also have an execution team, researching automated betting strategies using our predictive models and implementing algorithms to enable our clients to seed different bookmakers and market exchanges.  You’ll have plenty of autonomy to execute your models from idea to code to validation to (hopefully) deployment, integrating your well documented and tested code into our internal libraries to help in prediction for at least one of the above sports.  The atmosphere is a collaborative academic one with peer reviews, research talks, and the opportunity for further education. Unlike academia though, the market is there to give immediate feedback on how good your model is. This makes the job challenging but also very exciting.   At the moment, we are particularly keen to hear from those with an interest in football, baseball, basketball and/or execution research.    Key Responsibilities:  Contribute to identifying promising research directions; ensure research is carried out to the highest standard Develop predictive models for your sport of competence  Contribute to discussions and efforts to identify to weaknesses and potential improvements in existing models across all sports  Develop and maintain software that supports the delivery of our model predictions and the mathematical libraries behind our range of tools. Provide updates and estimates for delivery  Assist with the training of Junior Quants and provide them with direct feedback on their work  Commit to your professional development as a sport Quant Analyst by attending at least one event each year, such as industry conferences, courses or networking meet ups/events, either in-person or remotely, on relevant subjects Skills & Experience     Required  MSc in statistics or related area (e.g. Maths, Computer Science, Engineering, Physics)  PhD or equivalent in statistics or related area or 2+ years of work experience in a relevant role  Extensive experience of probabilistic and statistical modelling  Strong programming skills in one high level language such as R or Python  Ability to communicate results to those with and without specialist knowledge  Desirable  Knowledge of and interest in at least one of the following sports: Baseball, Basketball, Football (soccer), Cricket, American Football, Tennis, Ice Hockey  Good programming skills in C++ and/or Julia  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 with automated trading systems  Strong software development foundations  WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN RETURN - OUR BENEFITS  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) After Probation Private Medical Insurance - including  coverage of any excess payment Health Cash Plan via Bupa Life Assurance (4 x times earnings at time of death) Enhanced Company Sick Pay A discretionary annual bonus After 2 Years Increase In Employer Pension to 6% (to a minimum employee contribution of 3%) Enhanced Maternity Pay Enhanced Paternity Pay After 4 Years Increase In Employer’s Pension to 7% (to a minimum employee contribution of 3.5%) Powered by JazzHR