Quantitative Trader Internship (Dec 2024)

About the program

Our goal is to give you a real sense of what it’s like to work at Jane Street full time. Over the course of your internship, you will explore ways to approach and solve exciting problems within your field of interest through fun and challenging classes, interactive sessions, and group discussions—and then you will have the chance to put those lessons to practical use.

As an intern, you are paired with full-time employees who act as mentors, collaborating with you on real-world projects we actually need done. When you’re not working on your project, you will have plenty of time to use our office amenities, physical and virtual educational resources, attend guest speakers and social events, and engage with the parts of our work that excite you the most.

If you’ve never thought about a career in finance, you’re in good company. Many of us were in the same position before working here. If you have a curious mind, a collaborative spirit, and a passion for solving interesting problems, we have a feeling you’ll fit right in.

About the position

As a Quantitative Trading intern, you’ll be part of an immersive experience, paired with experienced traders who will teach you how to identify market signals, analyze and execute strategies, construct quantitative models, conduct statistical analysis, and build trading intuition. 

You'll work on projects alongside mentors in two different areas of trading, giving you a sense of the variety of problems we solve every day. In the past, these projects have included conducting studies on new or existing datasets, building quantitative models, writing tools, and even considering big-picture questions that we're still trying to figure out.

Throughout the summer, you'll also participate in dozens of simulated interactive team-based mock trading sessions. These will expose you to many of the dynamics we observe in real markets, illustrate the role that we play in making markets more efficient, and help build intuition for how we think about both trading and collaborating.

This work is reinforced with intensive classes on the broader fundamentals of markets and trading, workshops on various tools we use, and interactive lunch seminars with senior traders.  

During the second half of the internship, you will also get to participate in one “elective” based on your interests. Electives consist of targeted classes and immersive activities, and are designed to give you a deeper and more nuanced look into one of the many aspects of what trading and research can look like at Jane Street:

Algorithmic Trading and Market Microstructure

You’ll learn the end-to-end process of developing an algorithmic trading strategy. Working in small teams, you'll learn how to analyze market data to develop a tradable fair value, implement a trading strategy in Python, and adapt that strategy to different market structures. Teams will compete to have the best performing strategy in several different simulated markets. Through classes and immersive activities, you'll also learn how to backtest your strategy and improve its performance from simulation, and how real-world trading differs from simulation. 

Trading Strategy and Scenarios

Each week, you'll be introduced to a new trading scenario inspired by real events on a particular trading desk. You’ll work in teams on multiple mock trading sessions related to each scenario and use the time between sessions to refine your strategy, write recaps, and hear how the story played out in real life from our seasoned full-time traders who lived through it. 

Modeling, Machine Learning, and Data Science

You'll learn how Jane Street applies advanced machine learning and statistical techniques to model and predict large datasets. Through a series of classes and activities, you will analyze things such as real trading data, simulated marketdata, and prediction markets. You'll gain an understanding of the differences between textbook machine learning and its application to noisy and complex financial data.

About you

We don’t expect you to have a background in finance or any other specific field—we’re looking for smart people who enjoy solving interesting problems. We’re more interested in how you think and learn than what you currently know. You should be:

• A strong quantitative thinker who enjoys working collaboratively on a team 
• Eager to ask questions, admit mistakes, and learn new things
• Fluency in English required

There is a strong technology component to our trading strategy. Knowing a particular programming language is not required, but general programming experience is a plus. To learn more, you can read about all the internships we offer, our interview process, and meet some of our newest hires.

Please note: Jane Street will provide flights to and from Hong Kong as well as accommodation throughout the entirety of the program.