As the Research Lead at dYdX, you will drive strategic insights at the intersection of market structure, protocol and mechanism design, and user behavior. Your work will shape the core protocol and broader ecosystem narratives during a pivotal stage of decentralization and global expansion.

Protocol & Incentive Research

• Conduct cutting edge research into market structure, protocol design and mechanics, and incentive design — including internal-facing research to help the business understand user behavior, product performance, and growth opportunities; external-facing projects to contribute to the global conversation on protocol design, trading, and DeFi evolution; and educational content to help our audience become more sophisticated traders and product users.


• Collaborate with the Engineering team and other parts of the business, communicating research findings clearly across technical and non-technical audiences.


• Collaborate with the Growth team to identify and define key audience segments and leverage data-driven insights to inform growth strategies and guide product decisions.


• Take strong initiative in leading deep and exploratory research on open-ended questions around core product features and protocol development.

Data & Infrastructure

• Own and continuously enhance data infrastructure by optimizing systems, evaluating new tools, and promoting data best practices across the organization.


• Help define key metrics for protocol health and trader behavior.


• Build tools and pipelines to support research reproducibility and insight generation.

Thought Leadership & Community

• Help shape and clearly communicate dYdX’s product strategy through research-driven insights and external thought leadership.


• Collaborate with dYdX ecosystem partners and actively engage with the broader user community to enrich the research perspective and stay aligned with ecosystem needs.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in quantitative fields (Math, Computer Science, Physics, Statistics, Economics) or a related field.
• 4+ years of working experience in a technical role (Developer, Analyst, Quant, Data Scientist).
• 2+ years of experience working with blockchain or order book data (e.g. indexing blocks, building dashboards in Dune or similar, working with market data from crypto exchanges).
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
• Project management, time management, and ability to multitask.
• Proficient with data visualization tools for generating insights and communicating findings effectively.
• Entrepreneurial and intellectually curious, with a passion for asking the right questions, exploring data, and developing well-reasoned hypotheses.