---
title: 'Software Developer (Research) at DRW'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-developer-research-drw-montreal-g49aqf9a9zbs'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Software Developer (Research) at DRW 

- **Company:** DRW 
- **Location:** Montréal, Canada
- **Posted:** 2026-07-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/drweng/jobs/8095001

## Job description

DRW is a diversified trading firm with over 3 decades of experience bringing sophisticated technology and exceptional people together to operate in markets around the world. We value autonomy and the ability to quickly pivot to capture opportunities, so we operate using our own capital and trading at our own risk.

Headquartered in Chicago with offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, we trade a variety of asset classes including Fixed Income, ETFs, Equities, FX, Commodities and Energy across all major global markets. We have also leveraged our expertise and technology to expand into three non-traditional strategies: real estate, venture capital and cryptoassets.

We operate with respect, curiosity and open minds. The people who thrive here share our belief that it’s not just what we do that matters–it's how we do it. DRW is a place of high expectations, integrity, innovation and a willingness to challenge consensus.

We build the systems that turn real-world events into actionable signal, at low latency and high reliability in a trading environment where being right second is the same as being wrong. This role sits at the intersection of research and infrastructure: you'll form hypotheses, prove them with rapid analysis, and then build the production systems that act on them.

We also build with LLMs as a first-class part of the toolchain, not a side experiment. The people who do well here are the ones who can wield an agentic harness as fluently as they wield a profiler and who know exactly where each one stops being trustworthy.

## How You Will Make an Impact

Discovery & Research

- Expand our event-driven strategy across exchange feeds, market news, social media, and infrastructure telemetry.
- Spin up rapid analyses in Python/Jupyter to assess signal quality, and turn what you find into system improvements.

LLM & Agentic Systems

- Build and operate agentic harnesses — tools, context management, evals, guardrails — that do real work against our data and infrastructure, and own their quality in production.
- Apply LLMs where they genuinely win (extraction, classification, triage, research acceleration) and make the call to not use one where they don't.

Infrastructure & Technical Leadership

- Own full-stack performance from the network edge to in-memory stores — instrumenting, monitoring, and debugging production systems alongside operations, keeping SLOs razor-sharp.
- Lead green-field initiatives, design reviews, and post-mortems.

## What You Bring

Core

- 3–5 years building real-time or data-intensive systems (we weigh trajectory and depth over the exact number).
- Depth with LLMs, not just usage — how these models actually behave (context and its failure modes, tool use, structured output, cost/latency trade-offs, bounding hallucination) and how to build the harness around one: tools, memory, retries, evals, human-in-the-loop boundaries. Bring something real you shipped and can walk us through end to end, including what broke.
- Strong engineering fundamentals in Python, Go, or Rust. A preference, not a gate — deep systems experience in another serious language transfers.
- Deep knowledge of network programming and protocols — TCP/UDP/IP, DNS, BGP, HTTP(S), WebSocket, QUIC.
- Rapid POCs to production — validate statistical significance, iterate quickly, ship, and explain the result to technical and non-technical audiences alike.
- Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Data Science, Mathematics, or a related discipline.

Who Thrives Here

This is a competitive, high-stakes environment, and we're looking for people who want that rather than tolerate it. You'll likely recognize yourself here if:

- You want problems that are genuinely hard and measurable — where the scoreboard is real and public inside the team.
- You move fast without being sloppy, and you'd rather ship, measure, and correct than deliberate indefinitely.
- You're comfortable being wrong quickly and in public, and you update rather than defend.

Bonus Points

- Depth in the current LLM ecosystem — agent frameworks, MCP, RAG architectures, eval tooling, or local/self-hosted inference.
- Demonstrated success squeezing latency from NGINX, Envoy, or custom load-balancing layers.
- Background in high-pressure domains — trading floors, esports, competitive athletics, or hackathons.
- Open-source contributions, technical blogging, or conference speaking.

What DRW Montreal has to offer you:

- Mentorship with experienced software developers, database administrators, and technical project managers
- Continuous learning through paid postgraduate degrees, Dev Lightning talks, online learning support and 1 on 1 language tutoring with Berlitz
- 40 hours of paid volunteer work at the organization of your choice
- Bi-weekly social activities, monthly wellness plan, on-site weekly massages, and games room
- Enjoy daily catered meals (breakfast and lunch) with unlimited snacks and beverages
- Competitive salary, matching RRSP

Find out more about all of our perks & benefits at https://drw.com/work-at-drw/montreal-benefits.

For more information about DRW's processing activities and our use of job applicants' data, please view our Privacy Notice at https://drw.com/privacy-notice.

California residents, please review the California Privacy Notice for information about certain legal rights at https://drw.com/california-privacy-notice.

## #LI-AA1

## About DRW 

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: DRW is a diversified principal trading firm that leverages technology, research, and risk management to capture trading and investment opportunities globally across traditional and cryptoasset markets.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Privately Held)
- **Headquarters**: Chicago, Illinois, United States
- **Founded**: Year not publicly specified on the website, but linked data suggests operations since at least the early 2000s (acquired Chopper Trading in 2015).
- **Founders**: Founders are not publicly named on the company website or in standard public profiles.

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Financial Services, Proprietary Trading, Cryptoassets, Real Estate, Venture Capital
- **Target customers**: Institutional counterparties (for Cumberland, its crypto subsidiary); the firm trades its own capital across global markets (B2B/institutional focus).
- **Mission or purpose statement**: The company describes itself as a team of "innovative and ambitious individuals who use the power of free markets to solve challenging problems, capture opportunities, and pursue positive change." [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)

## Products & Services
- **Proprietary Trading**: DRW trades a wide range of asset classes including fixed income, ETFs, equities, FX, commodities, and cryptoassets, using sophisticated technologies to provide liquidity and capture opportunities.
- **Cumberland**: A subsidiary that provides deep liquidity in cryptoassets to large institutional counterparties and explores DeFi solutions. [drw.com](https://drw.com/our-subsidiaries)
- **DRW Venture Capital**: A VC practice that takes a disciplined approach to investing in financial and enterprise technology companies. [drw.com](https://drw.com/our-subsidiaries)
- **DRW Real Estate**: A fully integrated real estate investment arm that invests in bespoke projects. [drw.com](https://drw.com/our-subsidiaries)
- **NX**: A team that designs, builds, and operates a sophisticated global network for the firm. [drw.com](https://drw.com/our-subsidiaries)
- **Artemeter**: A subsidiary providing full-service carbon financing solutions to help clients achieve decarbonization goals. [drw.com](https://drw.com/our-subsidiaries)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue estimated at **$485.0M** (per LinkedIn data). [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/drw)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not applicable (privately held and self-funded). Notable subsidiaries include Cumberland (crypto).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount growth of **+10.6% YoY** (adding 233 people), reaching 1,628 employees. Active job postings increased **+53.8% YoY**. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/drw)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Diversified Approach**: Unlike many trading firms that focus on a single asset class, DRW trades across many asset classes and instruments, with horizons from seconds to years. [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)
- **Technology & Research**: Heavy investment in sophisticated technology, research, and risk management to find and capture opportunities globally.
- **Low Ego, Little Hierarchy**: The company explicitly states a culture of "low ego, little hierarchy and a commitment to continuous learning." [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)
- **Stability & Startup Spirit**: Described as offering "the best of both worlds: the opportunity and spirit of a startup and the benefits and stability of an established, experienced firm." [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)

## Strategic Focus
- **Expansion into Non-Traditional Strategies**: The firm has expanded beyond traditional trading into real estate, venture capital, and cryptoassets, indicating a focus on long-term, strategic, and diversified growth. [drw.com](https://drw.com/our-subsidiaries)
- **Continuous Innovation**: Focus on solving challenging problems, discussing technical and research topics, and challenging consensus to achieve high standards. [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)
- **Global Reach**: Operates in 29 countries with offices in the US, UK, Canada, Singapore, Netherlands, and Israel, signaling a commitment to global market participation. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/drw)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Philosophy**: The company emphasizes "low ego, little hierarchy," "challenge consensus," "integrity," and "continuous learning." It seeks curious problem solvers with quantitative mindsets. [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Rated 4.3/5.0 on compensation. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/drw) Perks include daily catered breakfast & lunch, monthly tastings, massages, yoga classes, meditation, gym subsidy, game room, and social events. [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)
- **Work Environment**: Offers flexible work arrangements. The culture is described as fast-paced, collaborative, and intellectually rigorous. [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)
- **Engineering Culture**: A significant portion of the workforce is technical (615 employees, 25% of total). Roles include Quantitative AI Strategist, Python Software Engineer, Data Developer, HPC Specialist, and Trading Systems Engineer. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/drw)
- **Global Offices**: Hybrid/office presence in Chicago (HQ), New York, London, Amsterdam, Singapore, Montreal, Tel Aviv, and more. [drw.com](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw/listings)

## Sources
1. [drw.com - Work at DRW](https://www.drw.com/work-at-drw)
2. [drw.com - Our Subsidiaries](https://drw.com/our-subsidiaries)
3. [linkedin.com - DRW Company Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/drw)
4. [greenhouse.io - DRW Engineering Jobs](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/drweng)

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