So You Want To Be A Citadel Trader: Here Are The Requirements
In the current turbulent times, in which one after another hedge fund is posting miserable performance numbers, gating or simply shutting down, one stalwart remains: Chicago's appropriately named financial megalith Citadel, which year after year posts tremendous returns purely on the back of its retail orderflow frontrunning HFT platform.
No surprise then that thousands of disenchanted traders are eager to move from their current underpaying employer, to Ken Griffen's financial powerhouse. But what skills would one need to be considered for employment and make the cut: fundamental, technical, charting, "blue horseshoe"?
Here is the answer from a just issued job seach posting by Citadel:
Quantitative Trading Systems Developer: Undergraduate, Master’s, PhD and Postdoc (New Grads)
Location: Chicago, IL
Are you a natural programmer who loves to optimize and make systems more efficient? Do you have a sophisticated computational skillset – code optimization, systems architecture and library design? Do you know your core languages like you do your native tongue?
At Citadel, Quantitative Trading System Developers are responsible for designing, building, and optimizing our automated trading platform. Developers work closely with our research, simulation and live trading teams. We are seeking top undergraduate, master’s, and PhD students who are entrepreneurial self-starters and enjoy being in a fast-paced and dynamic environment for exciting opportunities in our automated quantitative trading businesses. This opportunity offers excellent exposure to a quantitative trading career path in one of the world’s leading global financial institutions.
If this is what excites you:
- Developing core trading infrastructure
- Designing low-latency, high-throughput trading systems
- Optimizing massive parallel computing platforms.
And this is what you’ve got:
- Advanced training in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or other related fields
- Extensive programming experience with strong object oriented design skills and fluency in C, C++, or Java
- Expertise with algorithms and data structures
- Demonstrated ability to communicate complex ideas in a clear, concise fashion
- Ability to thrive in a complex, fast-paced, and highly technical environment
Useful:
- Scripting languages (e.g., Linux shell, Python, Perl)
- Analytical packages (e.g., R, Matlab)
- FPGA development and high performance computing
- NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB)
- Distributed computing using MapReduce
- Multi-threaded programming
- Network programming
This is what Citadel can give you:
- Collaboration with some of the brightest minds in the industry
- Meaningful projects that directly impact global markets
- A culture that values ambition and rewards talent
- World-class training, tools and mentorship
Company Overview:
We’re Citadel, a worldwide leader in finance that uses next-generation technology and alpha-driven strategies to transform the global economy. We tackle some of the toughest problems in the industry by pushing ourselves to be the best again and again. It’s demanding work for the brightest minds, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Here, great ideas can come from anyone. Everyone. You.
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they forgot one:
- have no conscious nor any ethics (sociopaths welcome!)
Where's lick Yellen's balls on the list?
Schwab and TD are still getting paid at least $100 million each year to rout orders to these sharks.
Oh, Scooby would love to join. Alas he is a solo contributor and NOT a fucking team player so there goes that. But who knows if the talent was brilliant and I could respect them....
They left out lack of integrety!
No thanks, I would rather keep my soul.
Let me summarize for the non-IT readers.
Programmers can design the system to front run all of your activity. It's like when the police can do 100mph in a 50mph zone. They make the rules and own the system.
I got it all from degrees to programming skills. Do I automatically qualify for 6 figures bonus and 6 figures salary?
I actually had these guys reach out to me through a recruited, as well as Blackrock...said no thanks if it involves HFT. They assured me it was for their DC office, which makes me think it's just got crony purposes.
It looks I have enough qualifications to get hired there...
They had better not put me in trading, though. I barely know the difference between a commodity, a stock, and a bond! It might get pretty ugly if I tried to do any trading!
Buy Low, Sell High! Wait... I think I have that backwards...
Cyber Thieves..
Do you think the guys that break into jewelry stores and sweep the display cases know what the diamond cut is, or the rating?
Agreed. Thats why the dimwits robbing jewelry stores are dumber than the box the rings come in...
http://www.financialcyclesweekly.com/members/images/2095.jpg
You miss out another requirement: If your middle name is Arsehole.
what a joke.. they left the big fucking part about discipline and responsability. They dont want no traders , barely an enslaved code monkey to run some arbtrage high freak bs
I remember abotu 25 or so years ago when I was a young pup in the business on wall street visiting a "trader" friend of mine for a wholesale firm. All the traders did was buy and sell based on VWAP of the stocks they were assigned. Frikking monkeys making mid six figures hitting a button
so they want a computer to take peoples money...............
Sacreligious would double post all trades that pass through.
Financial "engineering" is NOT engineering. Engineering studies the natural universe. Financial "engineering" studies the artificial universe of money-created-out-of-nothing.
No. Financial Engineering is a specialty within Industrial Engineering, and when they go full retard it is often because they supplant the industrial engineering with "computer engineering" and pure math for the sake of optimizing within the "small picture".
A PROFESSIONAL is a NATURAL PERSON who has a PROFESSIONAL LICENSE, granted by a State PROFESSIONAL BOARD, to undertake work that REQUIRES both study and RESPONSIBILITY. If you do not have such a Professional License, there is no means for you to actually be THE person undertaking professional RESPONSIBILTY, and therefore, in my opinion, you are not actually a PROFESSIONAL.
ENGINEERS are Licensed Professionals licensed by State Professional ENGINEERING BOARDS. If a person does not have a Professional Engineering License from his State Professional Engineering Board, then, in my opinion, he is not an Engineer.
As far as I have been able to find, "financial engineers" are not in fact licensed and regulated by any State Professional Engineering Boards. Therefore, I do not consider them Engineers. They are to Engineers as Witch Doctors are to STATE LICENSED M.D. Doctors.
I think "industrial engineers" may also not have Professional Engineering Licenses from State Professional Engineer Boards, and therefore may also not actually undertake personal responsibility.
This is not unimportant. Every time there is an "industrial accident" which hurts people or the environment, I look for the individual responsible, the NATURAL PERSON who signed off, and thereby took professional responsibility for, the system which failed. There never seems to be anyone. So who was in responsible charge? The "Corporation's Board of Directors", who are NOT trained in engineering those systems, and who avoid responsibility by making all decisions in "majority vote"? This is an enormous hazard, to wit, Fukushima and BP.
Then perhaps you should go back to school or go postal on the dangerous electrical, mechanical, structural, geotechnical, et al. engineers who operate in the (at least) 29 licensure jurisdictions that exempt employees of industrial or manufacturing firms since they are not PROFESSIONALS and have no RESPONSIBILITY for their work product by your arbitrary definition... and since SAFETY ENGINEERING is also a specialty within Industrial Engineering... I am left to wonder how you ever graduated college with such a narrow perspective on the engineering fields.
As to specifics of the NY and IL exemptions for professional engineers employed within the industry... perhaps you should take it up with the respective State boards...
But other than that, many professional Industrial Engineers are licensed, even many who work in the financial services industry (the revolving door creates some impediments to operating under an exemption).
All engineering is "safety engineering".
I WAS going postal on corporations which bypass engineering responsibility, and the States which allow them to do so.
I would ABSOLUTELY end the exempting of industrial or manufacturing firms. Public utilities too. State agencies too.
I bet if you ask a bunch of Licensed Industrial Engineers whether they are glad they have Licenses, they will resoundingly answer "yes".
The purpose of Professional Engineer Licensing is to protect the public. But it also protects the practitioner, by preventing incompetents from overruling him.
What I wonder is why people who earned engineering degrees, and who routinely do work that employs engineering skills, ALLOW such narrow State Licensing.
So perhaps WE should take it up with those States.
Consider the Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant, in Florida. Florida licenses structural engineers. The Plant's owner, Florida Power Corporation (FPC), a large public utility (granted a license by the State to provide electrical power to millions of Floridians, said license giving FPC a monopoly over that lucrative market) decided to attempt a "cheap" structural repair. The result of that "cheap" repair is that the entire plant is now dead, and Florida taxpayers are on the hook for billions of dollars.
Where was the Licensed Structural Engineer who signed off on the structural repair before FPC started it? I "bet" there were structural engineers working for FPC who said, "please don't do this". But FPC was exempt from Engineering Licensing, so no Engineering Document signed by a Licensed Engineer and recorded in the Public Record was required, so we will never know.
Can we imagine a Licensed Engineer signing off on a risky "cheap" structural repair for a nuclear power plant? I can't.
Remember "The China Syndrome" movie?
I have said enough about "financial engineers".
Just to clear things up, I respect anyone who has the perseverance to get an engineering degree. I don't think any corporations or agencies should be exempt from engineering licensing requirements. I still don't consider "financial engineering" to be engineering. I think the public and also the engineers are benefited by licensing.
A "technician" does all the things an engineer does, EXCEPT undertake personal professional responsibility for the outcomes of his work.
An "engineer" undertakes personal professional responsibility, and he does that when he signs a document which is recorded, either in the public record, or in files which are available for public review, which identifies him as the person undertaking professional responsibility.
So I think "financial engineers" are really "financial technicians". Nothing wrong with being a technician, of course, but there is a crucial difference.
It 'studies' how to ---- $$$$$$$$SKIM...
One of the main messages I took away from Flash Boys was that Katsuyama, and the new dark pool he created called IEX, was the antidote for Citadel and the HFT front running.
Now IEX is attempting to come out of the darkness and become an official exchange. A quote from the NYT and Goldman last Tuesday:
“We are concerned that exchange-affiliated routing broker-dealers may have access to and use the proprietary market data of the exchange to benefit their own order routers,” Goldman said on Tuesday in a comment letter to the S.E.C.
WAAAHHHH!http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/business/dealbook/goldman-says-iex-a-p...
Dude, it's only 350 micro-seconds. Like, what's the big deal?!? LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for linking that article.
Matlab? Pretty elementary for what they're doing.
From their bullet points...
Most of the easily available performance studies (since my knowledge is a decade old at this point) don't focus on high end parallel computing platforms, but when every nanosecond counts for production computation on high end servers... there is a strong argument for using Matlab for certain functions at certain times, but for the basic development and back testing... I think R is/was more practical (unless you can't code). And if you can code, then C/C++ would probably be the fastest, but you have do the coding really well... which can be problematic if periodic changes need to be rolled into production...
Fascinating... Microwave dishes & laser beams attached to towers, proximity and logistics priorities and $$$investment for the choicest plots to implement same... All in the relentless pursuit of --- what precisely...?
Being an arrogant wanker helps too.
Souless, arrogant wanker. Please be more descriptive the future.
Yeah? How about this:
NSA's data 'Scientists' have high school degrees. Vs the Chinese, who I'm sure have real scientists with actual PhDs from US schools. No wonder we get hacked all the time.
https://www.nsa.gov/psc/applyonline/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_CE.GBL?...
So Snowden the "super hacker" was lying about NSA capabilities?
Lol...
Most government hiring practice adheres to affirmative action and other unionist bullshit like that.
I was quite astonished one time going to a career fair where one of the three-letter agencies was recruiting both arts grads and engineering grads. The starting salary for both was the same, admitted the recruiting officer. As was the compensation path.
An agency around here was recruiting some IT "experts" for their child pornography team. They had some CS grads apply, and they had some guys with 20-years in the police services, who had taken a few Wordperfect courses. Guess who got the jobs? They actually did offer the CS grads jobs, but they'd have to go through basic cop training, and serve 5+ years "up north" breaking up bar fights before they would realistically have a shot at CS-relevant jobs.
Because of IT everything is going on autopilot. Automation of bidding process and resource exchange is a no-brainer. Who gets there first? People with the biggest gain incentives - the financiers and plain old crooks. That's how technology evolves.
When was it ever different? Back in horse and buggy days they've had information wars just like today. Whoever had the fastest messengers, the biggest army of carrier pigeons to deliver the news could pull off the best trades.
The race has been cut down to nanoseconds, but the essence is still the same. Get there first. Profit.
The problem is the legal framework - with what these firms are allowed to do, with the laws they bend and with bribe-takers such as the SEC willing to turn the other way as way as the money keeps flowing into private pockets.
I have no issues with bidding being 100% automated. I have the problem with the market foundation - tainted fiat, digital dollars, lobbying, sweeps etc.
Umm...
That isn't a job classification for "trader". Thats a job classification for Trading System Developer. They aren't the same thing.
A trader will come up with a coherent thesis. The traders then interface with the trading system developers to code it up, back test, stress test and walk forward the model to see how it performs.
These are two completely different jobs and skill sets.
I laughed out loud for real at your last sentence.
Are you from 2006?
Yea 2006. I was born that year. Jan 1 with a laptop running Matlab in my teeny tiny hand...
Bottom line. This article titled "trader" has nothing to with being a trader. Trust me on that.
Agree.
FPGA design among the qualifications? How many traders are expected to build their own ASIC's? None!
... unless they're mining bitcoin.
<<<These are two completely different jobs and skill sets>>> You're right. Besides, that job ad is a general purpose dragnet, in real life their bullet point checklist describes a whole teams' (several people) worth of knowlege and tech skills. They don't tell you what (roles) they are really looking for until you sign their NDA after at least your 3rd interview. Don't get discouraged college kids, apply for everything, enthusiastic newbies get hired too.
"Finance" is theft. It should be illegal.
I took a DOS class once, and can send you my results on a 5.25 floppy.
I think I can bring a lot to your team, I have no conscience and love the smell of burning puppies
You're hired. We're going to need some credentials.
Turn in your mom's skull to HR for phrenetic analysis and bona fides establishment.
Hmmm, no "Handle Lawsuits on your own" clause?
I guess that is the employment surprise that you find out later....
because I'm too lazy to look it up.. is it 65% of the market volume is HFT? So much for the retail investor. It's all about making money for Mother Merryl and the Government er, Goldman Sachs.
So let me get this right,. The buy side gets the stocks cheap, the hedge funds then manipulate the ups and downs, then the HFT boys front run the retail who end up filling all the 401k orders for mom and pop at the high's?
A quote from C.S. Lewis, extracted from his book MERE CHRISTIANITY:
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on”H igh F requency T hievery is NOT progress, nor is it innovation. It is a pernicious virus. The historical market foundations of exchanges provided a fairer, more honest method through which to trade than these Order Matching Systems, period.
we need a 5 cent per share trade tax...to stop this stupid hyper trading which does nothing but pervert the market
WE need?
Fuck that. Another tax. Great idea. Next thing is .5 cent tax on each Internet post...