Principal Quant

What You’ll Do

1) Quantitative Product Ownership

• Devise and own a highly consistent, coherent, and principled quantitative direction across trading, margining, liquidation, lending, and risk-related products.

• Ensure that individual models, parameters, and mechanisms fit together into a harmonious system, rather than a collection of locally-correct but globally-fragile designs.

• Own the end-to-end correctness, feasibility, and desirability of quantitative products in production.

• Take ownership over preventing tricky edge cases, stress scenarios, and failure modes from hitting production.

• Act as the first line of defense for user, partner, and internal feedback related to quantitative behavior:

  • answering questions about correctness and intent

  • diagnosing whether feedback reflects misunderstanding, edge cases, or real design flaws

  • driving fixes or adjustments when models do not behave as intended

• Treat post-launch behavior as a continuation of product design, continuously refining models based on observed outcomes and feedback. Biasing strongly towards system consistency during revisions, and avoiding repeated fragile patches.

2) Cross-Functional Leadership & Execution

• Act as the product owner for quantitative surfaces that are inherently difficult for others to reason about.

• Write exceptionally clear, precise specifications that engineers can implement correctly and safely.

• Translate complex quantitative concepts into explanations appropriate for each audience:

  • simplified mental models for users and partners

  • implementation-level clarity for engineers

  • risk and trade-off framing for leadership

• Own alignment-driving end-to-end:

  • proactively surface concerns, disagreements, and edge cases

  • address feedback thoughtfully rather than deferring or waiting for others

  • drive conversations to clear decisions and committed direction

• Take direct responsibility for validating implementations of quantitative products:

  • design and execute deep testing in non-production and production environments

  • reason about edge cases, stress scenarios, and failure modes that others are unlikely to catch

  • use QA support where helpful, but remain personally accountable for correctness

• Own the outcome when quantitative products are mis-implemented, even if gaps were not caught by QA, recognizing that the domain complexity requires quant-level validation.

3) Operational Ownership & Risk Management (Primary, High Bar)

• Take first-class oncall responsibility for quantitative systems and risk-sensitive product behavior in production.

• Act as a key responder during incidents involving:

  • abnormal trading behavior

  • liquidation anomalies

  • margin, risk, or insurance fund issues

  • extreme market conditions or tail events

• Be accountable for real-time decision-making during high-stakes situations, including:

  • diagnosing root causes under pressure

  • advising on mitigations, parameter changes, or temporary safeguards

  • balancing user impact, platform safety, and long-term risk

• Lead or co-lead post-incident analysis for quantitative failures, ensuring:

  • root causes are correctly understood (model vs implementation vs assumption)

  • durable fixes are made to models, parameters, or system design

  • learnings are fed back into product design and operational playbooks

• Proactively identify latent systemic risks and work with engineering and risk teams to reduce them before they manifest as incidents.

• Design quantitative products with operability in mind, including:

  • observability of key metrics and invariants

  • explainability of system behavior during abnormal events

  • safe failure modes and bounded blast radius

What We’re Looking For (Core Requirements)

We’re looking for exceptional senior ICs who combine strong product leadership with deep quantitative skill.

You should demonstrate:

• Prior experience building or operating trading venues, exchanges, or market infrastructure.

• A strong background as a quant, trader, or financial modeler, with hands-on experience designing or validating trading or risk models.

• Proven strength as a Product Manager, including:

  • owning outcomes end-to-end

  • driving cross-functional alignment

  • writing high-quality, precise specifications

• Deep understanding of margining, liquidation, leverage, and systemic risk mechanics.

• Strong operational mindset and comfort owning systems in production.

• Excellent communication skills, especially when explaining complex quantitative reasoning clearly.

• Sound judgment under ambiguity and high-stakes decision-making.

How This Role Is Different from a typical PM or a Quant position

• Like a traditional PM, you are focused on driving alignment, clarity, and product velocity.

• Unlike a traditional PM, you own a highly quantitative product domain, with more rigorous quantitative requirements. You are not expected to own UI outcomes.

• Like a traditional quant, you own the math and model behavior.

• Unlike a traditional quant, you are expected to own product outcomes and production impact.

• Your authority comes from quantitative rigor, product judgment, and operational ownership, not hierarchy or headcount.

How Success Is Measured

Success in this role is measured by:

• Correctness, robustness, stability, and consistency of quantitative systems in production.

• Reduction of systemic risk and severity of adverse events over time.

• Quality and clarity of specifications delivered to engineering teams.

• Trust earned across engineering, product, and leadership as the owner of quantitative product decisions.

• Long-term safety, growth, and resilience of the trading platform enabled by your designs.

This Role Is Not a Fit If

• You prefer research or modeling detached from production outcomes.

• You avoid cross-functional ownership or difficult alignment conversations.

• You are uncomfortable being accountable for real-world risk decisions.

• You treat specifications as static instructions rather than evolving hypotheses.

• You want a managerial role rather than a senior IC role.

Final Note

Principal Quants at GRVT are product owners for quantitative truth in production.

The best candidates are those who can reason rigorously about math and markets, translate that reasoning into clear and executable product decisions, and stand behind those decisions when the system is under real-world stress.