---
title: 'AI Researcher, LLMs at Hudson River Trading'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-researcher-llms-hudson-river-trading-london-0kya2c5jhs9a'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-04'
---

# AI Researcher, LLMs at Hudson River Trading

- **Company:** Hudson River Trading
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom / New York NY, United States
- **Posted:** 2026-08-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-04
- **Apply:** https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/careers/job/?gh_jid=8161770

## Job description

Hudson River Trading (HRT) is seeking an LLM-focused AI Researcher to join the HAIL team. HAIL (HRT AI Labs) is the team at HRT responsible for developing and maintaining our most powerful AI models, which are used by our trading teams to drive a significant fraction of our trading. The LLM team within HAIL builds large language models from scratch — pretraining, post-training, and serving — that are deployed across the firm to accelerate research, engineering, and trading workflows. Our goal is to produce LLMs that are genuinely best-in-world for the use cases we care about.

In this role, you'll work on every stage of the model development loop: tokenizer training, dataset curation and mixing, pretraining, post-training, evaluation design, inference, and live trading. HAIL researchers have great independence to pursue the directions they think would be most impactful as part of a small, focused team with minimal bureaucracy. They are enabled by state-of-the-art research clusters with very high GPU-to-researcher ratios, and supported by excellent engineering, hardware, and systems teams to realize their vision.

The work is challenging and visibly impactful, and the bar is high: we are not looking for people who will adapt existing recipes. We want people who can drive frontier capability gains and ship the code that gets us there.

## Qualifications

- Two or more years of hands-on experience training, post-training, or evaluating LLMs at scale
- Direct experience with at least one of: large-scale pretraining, post-training (SFT, RL), LLM evaluation design and statistical analysis, or distributed training/inference systems
- Research taste: ability to identify what's worth trying next, design ablations that change decisions, and update beliefs from evidence
- Strong engineering skills valued: GPU kernel development, lower-level PyTorch internals, or published work on a frontier-style LLM result

The estimated base salary range for this position is 200,000 to 300,000 USD per year (or local equivalent). The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This role will also be eligible for discretionary performance-based bonuses and a competitive benefits package. Culture

Hudson River Trading (HRT) brings a scientific approach to trading financial products. We have built one of the world's most sophisticated computing environments for research and development. Our researchers are at the forefront of innovation in the world of algorithmic trading.

At HRT we welcome a variety of expertise: mathematics and computer science, physics and engineering, media and tech. We’re a community of self-starters who are motivated by the excitement of being at the cutting edge of automation in every part of our organization—from trading, to business operations, to recruiting and beyond. We value openness and transparency, and celebrate great ideas from HRT veterans and new hires alike. At HRT we’re friends and colleagues – whether we are sharing a meal, playing the latest board game, or writing elegant code. We embrace a culture of togetherness that extends far beyond the walls of our office.

Feel like you belong at HRT? Our goal is to find the best people and bring them together to do great work in a place where everyone is valued. HRT is proud of our diverse staff; we have offices all over the globe and benefit from our varied and unique perspectives. HRT is an equal opportunity employer; so whoever you are we’d love to get to know you.

Please be advised: Use of AI tools during interviews or assessments is strictly prohibited, unless otherwise instructed or agreed upon. We employ various methods to evaluate the authenticity of candidate responses. If we determine that AI assistance was used during any stage of the hiring process, we reserve the right to immediately disqualify your candidacy or rescind any job offers extended.

## About Hudson River Trading

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Hudson River Trading (HRT) is a multi-asset class quantitative trading firm that builds automated trading algorithms to provide liquidity on global markets.
- **Entity Type**: Private (no public ticker; no external funding rounds disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: New York City, New York, USA
- **Founded**: 2002
- **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed (current owner is Jason Carroll)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Financial services – algorithmic trading and market making.
- **Target customers**: Institutional market participants, exchanges, and liquidity consumers (B2B). The firm trades on over 200 markets worldwide.
- **Mission/purpose**: “We are thoughtful market leaders, committed to the health and longevity of global markets.” [hudsonrivertrading.com](https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/)

## Products & Services
- **Automated Trading Algorithms**: Proprietary models developed by mathematicians, physicists, and software engineers to execute trades across equities, futures, options, and other asset classes. Emphasis on statistical analysis and high-performance infrastructure.
- **Market Making**: HRT provides two-sided liquidity on electronic exchanges, holding about 25% of capital overnight with an average holding time of roughly five minutes (distinct from stereotypical high-frequency trading firms). [wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Trading)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: In Q1 2021, HRT generated approximately **$1.2 billion** from trading, amid heightened market volatility (Bloomberg report). [wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Trading)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: No external investors (private, founder-owned). Member of the Principal Traders Group (Futures Industry Association). Acquired competitor Sun Trading in 2018.
- **Growth Signals**: Employs over 800 people across offices in New York, Chicago, Austin, Boulder, London, Singapore, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dublin. Continues to hire aggressively for roles in software engineering, algorithmic development, and research (130+ open roles as of mid-2026 per career page). [hudsonrivertrading.com/careers](https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/careers/)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Advanced technology stack**: HRT’s distributed system is on the Pareto frontier of latency and throughput, giving researchers and engineers a unique platform for fast experimentation.
- **Collaborative culture**: Unlike many prop trading firms, HRT emphasizes shared R&D and cross-team cooperation (“the best ideas are born in a shared research and development environment”).
- **Ethical stance**: Internal code of ethics that exceeds regulatory requirements; transparent market participation (<1% of trading in dark pools).
- **Diversified strategies**: Multi-asset, multi-timeframe trading reduces single-point risk and enables resilience.

## Strategic Focus
- **Talent acquisition**: Actively recruiting from top math, computer science, and physics programs, as well as experienced engineers from big tech (Wall Street Journal noted HRT’s efforts to attract talent from Silicon Valley).
- **Global expansion**: Continued office openings in Asia and Europe to access more markets and liquidity pools.
- **Infrastructure investment**: Ongoing development of low-latency, high-throughput systems to maintain a competitive edge in algorithmic trading.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: HRT describes itself as “a small tech company with a big impact” – a community of curious, collaborative problem-solvers. Core values include automation & efficiency, make it better, togetherness, and inclusivity. [hudsonrivertrading.com/life-at-hrt](https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/life-at-hrt/)
- **Hybrid/remote policy**: Majority of teams adopt an even split between in-office and remote work; some roles require full-time presence. Relocation assistance is available.
- **Perks & benefits**: Company-paid medical/dental (no premiums), 401k/pension matching, generous parental leave (via Progyny), caregiver support (Vivvi), fitness centers/reimbursement, daily catered meals, coffee bar, and regular social events (company trips, happy hours, volleyball tournaments).
- **Engineering environment**: Strong emphasis on C++, Python, OS internals, CPU architecture, and networking. Engineers work on everything from high-frequency trading engines to research infrastructure.

## Sources
1. [hudsonrivertrading.com](https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/) – Company overview, mission, and philosophy.
2. [hudsonrivertrading.com/careers](https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/careers/) – Job types, locations, and role descriptions (Algo Developer, Software Engineer, Algo Software Engineer).
3. [hudsonrivertrading.com/life-at-hrt](https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/life-at-hrt/) – Benefits, culture, diversity & inclusion, work environment.
4. [wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Trading) – History, business model, trading statistics (5% of US trading in 2014, Q1 2021 revenue, acquisition of Sun Trading).

## Other roles at Hudson River Trading

- [Junior Electronic Trading Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-electronic-trading-support-engineer-hudson-river-trading-singapore-873eh8jev286) — Singapore
- [Junior Electronic Trading Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-electronic-trading-support-engineer-hudson-river-trading-austin-tx-qj22557n4ea0) — Austin TX, United States / Chicago Illinois, United States / Dublin, Ireland / London, United Kingdom / New York NY, United States
- [Hardware Engineer Internship - Summer 2027](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-engineer-internship-summer-2027-hudson-river-trading-new-york-ny-3b52vnynjdga) — New York NY, United States
- [Design Verification (DV) Engineer - 2027 Grads](https://feeny.ai/job/design-verification-dv-engineer-2027-grads-hudson-river-trading-new-york-ny-b9csc99htsdq) — New York NY, United States
- [Hardware Design Engineer - 2027 Grads](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-design-engineer-2027-grads-hudson-river-trading-new-york-ny-s0dh7w0gq9fh) — New York NY, United States
- [Global Real Estate Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/global-real-estate-lead-hudson-river-trading-new-york-ny-n05xpt61cxmw) — New York NY, United States
- [Electronic Trading Support Engineer - 2026/2027 Grads](https://feeny.ai/job/electronic-trading-support-engineer-2026-2027-grads-hudson-river-trading-dublin-82xzkpm732rm) — Dublin, Ireland
- [AI Researcher](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-researcher-hudson-river-trading-london-5q728rcbzhvb) — London, United Kingdom / New York NY, United States
- [Signal Integrity / Power Integrity Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/signal-integrity-power-integrity-engineer-hudson-river-trading-austin-tx-ha2yz7vmp8xn) — Austin TX, United States / Boulder Colorado, United States / Chicago Illinois, United States / New York NY, United States
- [ASIC Technical Project Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/asic-technical-project-manager-hudson-river-trading-new-york-ny-2bgdyc4nk69g) — New York NY, United States