Who Kalshi, Polymarket and more are hiring as prediction markets grow

Prediction markets, in which people bet on the likelihood of real-world events via event contracts, have exploded in popularity over the past few years. As institutional players like Citadel Securities are becoming increasingly interested, these firms are starting to ramp up their growth efforts... but who are they hiring?

💥Follow us on WhatsApp for news alerts.💥

For one, prediction markets firms are in the market for staff found at those hedge funds and trading firms interested in trading on it. Peter Wagner, an MD at quant headhunting firm Affinity North, called Kalshi "a new player in the market for elite talent" in a market report last month. Polymarket, meanwhile has mentioned trading firms in multiple job listings; it asked for prop trading experience in an opening for a trade surveillance analyst, and for HFT experience when recruiting for a senior backend engineer. In an opening for a senior C++ engineer, it also asks for specialists in low latency techniques common in hedge funds like lock-free programming and multithreading.

There are many hedge fund alums working in these companies already. Last month, Polymarket hired Mukilan Ashok as its interim US CTO; he was most recently global head of electronic trading engineering for credit at Citadel. Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour, meanwhile, previously interned at Citadel.

Kalshi is also hiring traders on salaries of up to $250k for an affiliated trading entity that provides liquidity to the platform. They're expected to have a consistent PnL on Kalshi, trade large volumes on the platform, or have a strong background in traditional finance, sports betting, or competitive games like poker. Polymarket was reported to be building a similar team as of December.

Polymarket, more so than Kalshi, is looking for crypto and web.3 enthusiasts. It uses smart contracts written in Solidity, a language built on the ethereum blockchain. Various blockchain technologies are mentioned across its job listings; it helps to have experience in roll-up technologies like Arbitrum Nova, as well as byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) consensus engines. Blockchain specialists are likely to become of increasing importance at Kalshi, which announced in December that it was tokenizing some of its markets through Solana.

Both teams are building out new teams and functions right now. Polymarket says that is has "no existing QA infrastructure," and is hiring a quality assurance engineer to build a team. It's also hiring its first technical program manager. Kalshi, meanwhile, has an open listing for its first product manager, likening the role to a founder (although several people have joined as product managers recently).

These firms are still startups, so naturally most of the people joining them are arriving from other startups and scaleups. Dan Lee joined Polymarket's product team from Coinbase, where he spent over four years; Lee was also previously an associate director at electronic trading firm Tower Research. Software Engineer Shen Jin joined last month from Scale AI, but he also spent three years with Robinhood.

These teams are still very much in their infancy. In a podcast last month, Kalshi's founders said the fintech has just 120 employees. A now-closed job listing for Polymarket said it had 110 people at the start of this year but would be scaling to 260 people by the end of 2026.

As with any exciting new technology, incumbent players are trying to get involved. The biggest fintechs building out prediction markets are Robinhood and Coinbase. The latter entered the space by acquired The Clearing Company, a prediction markets platform led by multiple Polymarket and Kalshi alums including ex-Polymarket head of engineering Liam Kovatch and head of growth Toni Gemayel. Robinhood initially launched its platform in partnership with Kalshi but, earlier this year, it teamed with Susquehanna to acquire MIAXdx, a derivatives exchange that was once upon a time owned by Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you'd like to share? Contact: WhatsApp: http://wa.me/442079977910 (+44 20 7997 7910), Telegram: @AlexMcMurray, Signal: @AlexMcMurrayEFC.88 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email [email protected].