Quantitative Trader

Base Power Company; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Base is seeking a Quantitative Trader to trade ERCOT retail load and battery fleet, starting with a short-term strategy (up to 30 days) and expanding to PJM and beyond. You will help supplement Base’s long-term strategy with a rigorous, portfolio-construction approach to manage exposure across generation and load.

You’ll trade power products, build pricing models in Python, and contribute to in-house price views and risk decisions.

Qualifications

• Experience trading power products on a bank, utility, or merchant trading desk
• Hands-on proficiency building statistical and pricing models using Python
• Demonstrated experience in portfolio construction — architecting hedges across a book of exposures
• Strong fundamentals-based market view: congestion, transmission constraints, load/generation balance
• Deep experience in any ISO (ERCOT focus currently) and expansion to PJM

Responsibilities

• Trade short-term power products to capture incremental margin, with room to extend into longer-horizon and structured positions
• Strengthen hedge strategy with a portfolio-construction-based approach across the battery fleet and retail load book
• Contribute to Risk & Trading's long-term price forecasts using market fundamentals
• Articulate market views, trading rationale, and P&L drivers to leadership
• Evaluate capacity markets and other structured products in ERCOT and PJM

Skills

Power trading

Portfolio construction

Market fundamentals

ISO experience

Independent contributor

Tools

Python

Job description

About Base

Base is America’s next-generation power company. We’re rebuilding the foundation of modern civilization–electricity–by deploying a vast network of distributed batteries that is transforming today’s fragile, centralized grid into a resilient and abundant system. We are engineers, operators, and creatives solving some of the most complex, interdisciplinary challenges of our time.

About the Role

We are seeking a Quantitative Trader to trade both Base’s retail load book and battery fleet. Your immediate focus would be to build a strategy for the short term (up to 30 days out) for ERCOT with near term scope to build out the strategy in PJM and eventually other ISOs. You’ll also help supplement Base’s existing longer term strategy by bringing a rigorous, portfolio-construction driven approach to how we manage exposure across generation and load. This will also involve contributing directly to the Trading & Risk’s own long-term, fundamental based price views.

What You’ll Do

• Trade short-term power products to capture incremental margin, with room to extend into longer-horizon and structured positions
• Strengthen Base's existing hedge strategy with a more rigorous, portfolio-construction-based approach to exposure management across the battery fleet and retail load book
• Contribute to Risk & Trading's in-house long-term price forecasts - incorporating market fundamentals (congestion, transmission constraints, load/generation balance) into views that inform trading and hedging decisions
• Articulate market views, trading rationale, and P&L drivers clearly to leadership, shaping desk-level strategy
• Evaluate capacity markets and other structured products where they offer real hedge or trading value, in ERCOT and (as we expand) PJM and beyond

What You'll Bring

• Experience trading power products on a bank, utility, or merchant trading desk, with direct exposure to forward curves, hedge instruments, and short-term markets
• Hands-on proficiency building statistical and pricing models yourself (Python; not dependent on an analyst to implement your ideas)
• Demonstrated experience in portfolio construction - architecting hedges across a book of exposures, not just single-position trades
• Strong fundamentals-based market view: understands how congestion, transmission constraints, and load/generation balance flow into price formation
• Deep experience in any ISO. Base is currently ERCOT-focused, with PJM expansion imminent and additional ISOs to follow
• Comfort operating as an individual contributor in a small, fast-moving team - no analyst bench to lean on

About the Team

The Markets team at Base is tasked with ensuring the grid-support performance and profitability of Base’s distributed battery fleet. This encompasses device communications with balancing authorities, telemetry analysis, algorithms for fleet aggregation and economic dispatch, through to financial portfolio management in wholesale energy markets. Our team is made up of physicists, economists, computer scientists, and engineers; the best candidates will bring the day-over-day intensity of an operator with the foresight to drive the long term development of simpler, more performant automated control. Success looks like building the airplane as it falls out of the sky.

Base is a startup, which means priorities shift and evolve quickly. Your role may expand or change based on the needs of the business at any given time, so the responsibilities listed may not be exhaustive.

Our Values

• First Principles Thinking: Question assumptions. Principles > rules.

• Operate at Base Pace: Focus on what matters, act quickly, and learn by doing.

• Give & Get Feedback: Be direct, be humble, and maintain a growth mindset.

• Everyone’s an Owner: Follow through on commitments and own results.

• Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: Drive clarity and make calls with imperfect information.

• Committed to the Mission: Rebuilding the grid is a big challenge. We work hard because we care deeply about the impact we’re creating. We work in-person. It’s not a 9-to-5. We are all-in.

• Fun & Optimism Coexist with Grit: Collaboration and celebration coincide with the intensity of building real things.

Do the best work of your life at Base.