Senior Data Scientist / Analyst, Markets

Job description

ABOUT POLYMARKET Polymarket is the world's fastest growing prediction market platform. We enable individuals to express views on real-world events by trading on outcomes across politics, economics, sports, culture, and current affairs. Built as a peer-to-peer marketplace with no centralized "house," Polymarket aggregates diverse opinions into transparent, market-based probabilities that reflect collective expectations about the future. We're growing quickly, both in terms of volume ($115B traded to date) and adoption as an alternative news source. Our ambition is to become a ubiquitous beacon of truth in global media and we need your help adding fuel to the fire. ABOUT THE ROLE The Markets team is responsible for what gets listed on Polymarket, how those markets are structured, and whether they actually work. That means thinking hard about liquidity, market design, and what separates a market that generates real price discovery and volume from one that gets limited traction. This role sits inside that team as its dedicated analyst, owning the analytical layer behind nearly every decision they make. The markets team needs someone who can build the infrastructure for understanding market health, model the dynamics that drive liquidity, and help the team make smarter calls on what to list, what we pay liquidity providers, where our catalog is thinner than the competition's, and when a market is simply broken. You will not be handed a backlog of tickets. You will be expected to identify the questions that matter, go answer them, and come back with something decision-ready. This is a high-ownership role for someone who thinks seriously about how markets work. If you have spent time at a prediction market, a trading firm, or a fund where you were close to market structure questions, this will feel familiar. Expect a fast-moving environment where thousands of new markets launch every day and the incentive structures behind them change with them. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Model liquidity dynamics across markets to identify what drives healthy order flow, and use that to inform how we structure and adjust liquidity rewards - Own the analytics behind our liquidity rewards and rebate programs, including what we pay out, what depth and spread we get for it, how rebates shape maker behavior, and whether the incentives are priced correctly, including watching for programs being gamed before it shows up in the payout numbers - Build and maintain recurring reporting on market health and market-by-market performance, including volume, liquidity, spread, trader participation, and resolution outcomes so the team has an ongoing view of which markets earn their place - Audit new market listings against historical and comparable market data, and recommend approval, structural adjustment, or rejection - Diagnose underperforming markets to root cause, whether that is poor resolution criteria, thin liquidity, bad timing, or something else entirely - Track competitive listing coverage to assess where our catalog is thinner than the competition's, which of those gaps actually matter, and how quickly we close them - Develop frameworks for evaluating what makes a market work, so those standards can be applied consistently across listings and product decisions - Partner with the Markets team weekly to scope incoming data questions, prioritize them, and deliver outputs that lead to a decision rather than just a chart - Identify gaps in our data collection or instrumentation and work with engineering to close the ones that matter for market analysis - Own documentation end-to-end — writing clearly and thoroughly enough that anyone on the team can pick up your analysis without friction WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 7+ years in analytics, data science, market operations, or exchange strategy, ideally somewhere close to market structure questions - Expert SQL. You can work directly against high-volume transaction and order book data without supervision - Strong Python for data analysis, statistical modeling, and working with large datasets - Deep, working knowledge of market structure. You can reason about order books, spreads, liquidity provision, and market design tradeoffs without needing a primer - Ability to reason about incentive design: what a rewards program buys, what it costs, and how a sophisticated participant would game it - Experience owning analyses end to end, from scoping an ambiguous question to handing a stakeholder something they can act on - Comfort working embedded in a non-data team where you are setting your own agenda and managing your own priorities - A high bar for accuracy. These numbers drive real payouts, and you know which ones cannot be wrong - Comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment where business logic changes frequently and you need to keep pace - (Plus) Experience at a prediction market platform, trading firm, or fund where you were close to market structure or liquidity questions - (Plus) Familiarity with automated market makers, CLOB mechanics, or decentralized exchange design - (Plus) Experience building or evaluating liquidity incentive programs - (Plus) Familiarity with on-chain data or blockchain analytics BENEFITS - Competitive salary & equity - Unlimited PTO - Full Health, Vision, & Dental coverage - 401k match - Hardware setup: new MacBook Pro, big display, & accessories