Campus Quantitative Researcher, PhD (Intern)

Jump Trading is a financial technology and quantitative research firm that applies advanced mathematics, statistics, computer science, and engineering to global financial markets. The Campus Quantitative Researcher, PhD (Intern) will complete a 10-week in-person research internship, collaborating with trading teams to develop predictive models, analyze large datasets, and evaluate research ideas against live markets.

What you'll do:

• Match with a trading team and own a research project end to end, in areas such as predictive modeling, alpha research on new datasets, and improving the models and systems behind live trading
• Collect, clean, and explore large datasets (some clean, some noisy, some very noisy) and engineer features that turn raw data into predictive signal
• Build, fit, and evaluate models on our supercomputing grid, and present your results to your team throughout the summer, culminating in a final presentation
• Receive daily 1:1 mentorship from experienced quant researchers, with growing autonomy and compute as the summer progresses
• Other duties as assigned or needed

What they're looking for:

• The program is open to currently enrolled PhD students
• Currently pursuing a PhD in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, or any highly quantitative field; recent researchers have come from fields as varied as Electrical Engineering, Operations Research, and Economics
• Systematic research thinking: the ability to form well-educated hypotheses, design rigorous tests, and draw statistically sound, generalizable conclusions. No matter your area, these are the fundamental aspects of a good researcher, and it is no different at Jump Trading
• Ownership of your research: the ability to explain the choices you made, the alternatives you considered and rejected, and why your approach won. Every idea demands a premise, and every rejection deserves a reason
• Experience conducting an in-depth research project with real-world data
• Programming experience in Python, with the ability to read, understand, and debug code, including code you didn't write
• Communicative and collaborative working style, sharing results early and often and treating mentors' time as a resource to use, not conserve
• Creativity and initiative to explore ideas beyond those suggested to you, with the judgment to bring your team along as you do
• Perseverance: successful research is the result of lots of failure and intellectual risk-taking, and a PhD is often proof that you can stay with a hard problem for years without quitting
• Reliable and predictable availability required
• INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS are encouraged to apply. We accept students eligible for CPT/OPT and we sponsor work visas for full-time positions
• Proficiency in C++ and/or Python (either works, and both is better)

Benefits:

• INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS are encouraged to apply. We accept students eligible for CPT/OPT and we sponsor work visas for full-time positions.
• A first two weeks focused training covering our research process, machine learning, statistics, trading and market mechanics, Python, and the infrastructure you'll use all summer.
• Receive daily 1:1 mentorship from experienced quant researchers, with growing autonomy and compute as the summer progresses
• We accept students eligible for CPT/OPT and we sponsor work visas for full-time positions.