Zhendong Qin

Building software since 1999, and trading systems since 2008.

I started out on satellite communications, then ran my own company for six years building a web and video conferencing system that more than 200 organizations licensed. Since 2008 I have built trading systems end to end: market data, order gateways, exchange certification, strategy frameworks, simulators, and the research that runs on top of them, across fixed income, futures, equities, options and crypto.

Everything here is new work, built on that experience and on what today's tools make possible. MTS Platform is a newly built trading system with a toolbox that checks it, and MTS Lab is the research environment on the same engine. Along the way I built Products: Memory, for when my AI tools kept forgetting what the last session had learned, and PriorStates Studio and Desk, the small apps and desktop tools I wanted and could not find.

Along the way

• 2025 – nowShort Cliffs Capital
  CTO and founding member. Built a multi-venue US Treasury cash and futures platform across CME, BrokerTec, Tradeweb and MarketAxess, certified and running in colo.
• 2023 – 2025Summit Securities Group
  Built and maintained fixed-income trading infrastructure: feed handlers, gateways, and the strategy layer on top. Researched and traded high-Sharpe UST and TIPS strategies.
• 2018 – 2023TokenHills, Apifiny, Hilbert
  Founded TokenHills and built an end-to-end HFT trading and research system for crypto markets. As VP of Technology, helped take Apifiny to the second round of SEC IPO review. Then led trading-platform engineering at Hilbert.
• 2013 – 2017Tower Research Capital
  Built feed handlers and gateways for China futures, created CME trading applications and strategies, and researched US equity and ETF trading features and strategies.
• 2008 – 2013Citigroup
  Options pricing servers and the messaging behind 500,000 options symbols.
• 2002 – 2007SmileTiger Software
  Founder. A web and video conferencing system licensed by Warner Bros., Lockheed Martin, Lloyd's, the US Coast Guard and others.
• 1999 – 2001Lockheed Martin Global Telecom
  Voice and data systems for Intelsat and Inmarsat, network management for Astrolink.

Say hello

I'm glad to hear from anyone who finds something here useful, wants to build on it, or has a problem worth solving together.