DeFi Quant Research Intern (Digital Assets Market Making)

Since 2017, Keyrock has been a change-maker in digital assets. We're a global, remote-first team of 200+ people across 40+ nationalities, with hubs in Brussels, London, Paris and New York.

We provide liquidity across 80+ centralized and decentralized exchanges - a position cemented by our Series C, led by SC Ventures. Today we run a full spectrum of capital markets businesses across centralized and on-chain venues: market making, high-frequency trading, options, OTC, DeFi trading desks, advisory, and asset management.

We're building toward the agentic investment banking capabilities for the era of digital finance. A proprietary agentic layer runs the mechanics of the market, so our people can focus on the work code cannot do: the deal, the relationship, and the judgement.

We're not just envisioning the future of finance - we're building it.

ABOUT THE INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

Our internship programme gives early-career talent the opportunity to build practical skills, contribute to meaningful projects and learn alongside experienced colleagues in digital finance.

Typically lasting six months and based in our Brussels office (London possible), each internship includes hands-on experience, clear learning goals and dedicated guidance and regular feedback. We look for curiosity, relevant foundational skills, deep, active interest and passion for digital assets and the potential to grow exponentially with us - you don’t need to arrive with all the answers. Where performance, business needs and available opportunities align, an internship may lead to a permanent role, though this is not guaranteed.

We are looking for 3-4 high-caliber Quantitative Analyst Interns to sit within our Strategic Market Making (CeFi and DeFi), Credit and Corporate Development desks/teams (see other openings on our career page for details).

Application deadline: 30 November 2026
Start date: 1 March 2027

Selection process:

• Interview with Talent Acquisition representative
• Interview with Hiring Manager
• Recruitment Challenge

The role

About Strategic Market Making Desk

Our Strategic Proprietary Market Making team researches and deploys systematic trading strategies across digital asset markets. Within the DeFi track, we focus on how blockchain mechanics, protocol design and on-chain market structure shape liquidity, execution and risk.

As a DeFi Quant Research Intern, you will work alongside quantitative researchers, traders and engineers to study on-chain markets and support the development of data-driven trading strategies. You will analyse blockchain and market data, test hypotheses through backtesting and simulation, build research tooling, and investigate how real-world execution—including gas, transaction ordering, liquidity fragmentation and MEV—affects strategy performance.

This is a technical and applied internship. We are looking for someone who combines strong quantitative reasoning and coding skills with genuine hands-on DeFi experience. You should be curious about how protocols work beneath the interface and able to connect blockchain mechanics to market behaviour and trading outcomes.

Key Responsibilities - DeFi Quant Research Intern

• Research on-chain market structure by analysing liquidity, price formation, participant behaviour and execution across decentralized markets.
• Study how protocol mechanics, transaction ordering, gas, slippage, latency and MEV affect execution quality and strategy performance.
• Formulate trading hypotheses and evaluate them using blockchain data, market data, backtests and simulations.
• Build reusable Python tools and data pipelines for research, monitoring and performance analysis.
• Analyse relationships between centralized and decentralized markets and identify their implications for pricing, hedging and risk.
• Support live strategies through monitoring, post-trade analysis and investigation of unexpected performance.
• Present findings clearly, including assumptions, limitations, risks and recommended next steps.

WHO YOU ARE/KEY REQUIREMENTS - DEFI QUANT RESEARCH INTERN

• Quantitative and coding foundations: You are pursuing or recently completed a degree in mathematics, computer science, engineering, physics, quantitative finance or a related field. You are proficient in Python for data analysis and comfortable with SQL, Git and command-line workflows.
• Practical blockchain understanding: You understand transactions, state changes, gas, blocks, consensus and finality at a working level, and can reason about how smart-contract interactions execute on-chain.
• DeFi market knowledge: You understand AMMs, concentrated liquidity, swaps, liquidity provision, oracles and liquidations, and how decentralized execution differs from a centralized order book.
• MEV awareness: You understand how transaction ordering and block construction can create arbitrage, liquidation, backrunning and sandwiching opportunities or risks, and how these dynamics affect execution.
• Hands-on curiosity: You have used DeFi beyond coursework or social media. Ideally, you have built or analysed something yourself—such as an on-chain dataset, trading or monitoring script, AMM simulation, protocol integration or research project.
• Trading judgement: You naturally question whether an apparent edge survives fees, gas, latency, slippage, adverse selection and changing market conditions.
• Ownership and communication: You can structure an ambiguous problem, test assumptions and communicate findings and limitations clearly in English.

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience querying blockchain data through RPCs, indexers, subgraphs or analytics platforms.
• Ability to read Solidity, contract interfaces and event logs.
• Exposure to Rust or another systems programming language.
• Familiarity with non-EVM ecosystems or Layer 2 execution models.
• A technical project demonstrating sustained interest in DeFi or on-chain markets.

Our offer

• A 6 month paid internship at world-renowned digital assets company with accommodation provided for entirety or part of it
• The opportunity to learn about digital assets and blockchain from a 30,000 ft view of the entire ecosystem
• Working from one of Brussels newest, nicest and most advanced office spaces
• A global, collaborative and tech-driven environment.
• Autonomy & Impact - our flat structure means you can contribute your ideas from day one and help shape the foundation that will power Keyrock’s future business.
• Culture of Excellence - we value nimbleness, drive for success, owner mentality and collaboration.
• Opportunity to leave your mark and start your career in one of the most reputable companies in the digital assets world
• We are envisioning for the internship to be based pre-dominantly in Brussels. It is possible for a selected candidate to be based in London, UK, provided at least 1-2 months onboarding period would be spent in Brussels together with the rest of the interns cohort.

Our recruitment philosophy

We value self-awareness and powerful communication skills in our recruitment process. We seek fiercely passionate people who understand themselves and their career goals. We're after those with the right skills and a conscious choice to join our field. The perfect fit? A crypto enthusiast who’s driven, collaborative, acts with ownership and delivers solid, scalable outcomes.

As an employer we are committed to building a positive and collaborative work environment. We welcome employees of all backgrounds, and hire, reward and promote entirely based on merit and performance.

Due to the nature of our business and external requirements, we perform background checks on all potential employees, passing which is a prerequisite to join Keyrock.