HFT alumni's crypto firm hiring graduates, interns &... FTX alumni
A common take on the crypto scene is that firms established during difficult times will become much stronger for it in the long run. New York based blockchain infrastructure firm Monad is hoping to be no exception.
Monad was established by James Hunsaker and Keone Hon, both former engineers at high frequency trading (HFT) firm Jump Trading. HFT and the buy side may be seen as the top destination for graduates and interns, but Monad, which is building an ultra-low-latency blockchain, has been able to pry a few entry-level talents away from it.
Interns are abundant at Monad, and come from a variety of areas. Dunmin Zhu, who studies at Harvard and MIT, was most recently an intern at HFT firm Hudson River Trading and joined Monad as an intern last month. George Tang of MIT meanwhile was most recently a low latency software engineer at Citadel Securities. Some also have experience at tech firms: Andre Benedito previously interned at Amazon and Oussama Saoudi interned at Huawei.
When it comes to graduate hires, Monad appears to be more focused on people with finance experience. Tong Zhi, who graduated in 2022, also interned at Hudson River Trading and spent six months as a quant at prop trading firm IMC before joining Monad in February. Vicky Chen, another Hudson River intern, interned for Monad for four months, becoming a full time engineer in February.
Defunct or struggling crypto giants are also a source of staff. Joey Anthony, the first member of its business development team, joined from Coinbase in May, while ecosystem growth associate Kiernan Fitzsimmons spent almost two years at fallen crypto titan FTX. Fitzsimmons worked in the firm's NFT division and as part of its university ambassador program.
Monad isn't finished hiring. It currently has eight open listings in operations, engineering and research. Among the engineering listings is a low-latency C++ engineer role paying a "minimum full time salary of $250k" and a senior solidity engineer paying a salary between $200k and $250k.
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