Quant Risk Analyst - Derivatives & Clearing

As a Quant Risk Analyst for Derivatives and Clearing at Polymarket, you'll design and implement enterprise-scale risk models at the heart of our clearing operation. You own the systems for market risk, volatility and correlation of derivatives, stress testing, and automated liquidation that keep the world's largest prediction market platform solvent and users protected as markets, volumes, and derivative products grow.

What you'll do

• Design, implement, and maintain enterprise-scale risk models covering market risk, margin, and counterparty exposure for a clearing organization.
• Build volatility and correlation models for derivatives, including calibration, backtesting, and ongoing model validation.
• Develop and run stress-testing frameworks: historical scenarios, hypothetical shocks, and reverse stress tests.
• Design and tune auto-liquidation logic including trigger thresholds, liquidation waterfalls, and safeguards against cascading liquidations.
• Use AI tools to accelerate model development, coding, and research, while rigorously validating AI outputs against established risk models (VaR/ES, SPAN-style margining, GARCH-family volatility models, standard correlation frameworks) before deployment.
• Monitor model performance in production, investigate breaks, and iterate quickly.
• Partner with engineering, trading, and product teams to embed risk controls into platform architecture.
• Document model assumptions, limitations, and validation results to an audit-ready standard.

What you bring

• 5-7 years of quantitative risk experience at a clearinghouse, exchange, prime broker, trading firm, or similar organization.
• Proven expertise designing and implementing risk models at enterprise scale in production systems, not just research prototypes.
• Deep experience modeling volatility, correlation, option skews, and option pricing, implemented at scale for traditional derivatives, perpetuals, and fully collateralized event contracts.
• Hands-on experience with market risk modeling, stress testing, and auto-liquidation mechanics in a clearing context.
• Strong fluency with AI-assisted development and coding, paired with the judgment to pressure-test AI outputs against well-established risk models and identify what looks plausible but is wrong.
• Expert-level Python including the numerical stack (NumPy, pandas, SciPy) and solid software engineering practices.
• An advanced degree in a quantitative field (math, statistics, physics, financial engineering, or CS) or equivalent experience.
• A strong mathematical foundation in stochastic calculus and linear algebra.

Nice to have

• C# and/or C++ for performance-critical or production systems.
• Familiarity with crypto market structure, perpetuals, or prediction markets.
• Experience with CCP risk frameworks (CPMI-IOSCO PFMI, default management, margin methodology).
• Experience building real-time risk systems.

What we offer

• In-person role based in our New York City office.

About Polymarket

Polymarket is the world's largest prediction market platform where people trade on the outcomes of real-world events. As markets, volumes, and derivative products grow, the platform operates with the rigor of a traditional clearinghouse while moving at the speed of a crypto-native trading platform.