Q&A: The Internship Experience | Trading

Were you given the freedom to take your own initiative?

Yes. That was coupled with the fact that we were strongly encouraged to shadow others on the desk, including experienced traders, to see how they monetized their ideas. I was a big fan of that because I felt like I had all the tools I needed to solve the problem, and the actual action was left up to me.

Your second project was related to our options business. Did you know its importance at the time?

The problem was framed to me as, “Here is something important to the business, and here’s why we want you to work on it.” I knew straight away what the impact of my work could be, and I was able to approach it in the way I wanted. They gave me a lot of autonomy in working on it, and it was an important problem for the business to solve.

The tool I built is important to the business because it helps us understand our risk in various scenarios — or the nuances of our risk. It certainly helps inform our trading decisions.

How did the internship help you grow your skills?

I came in looking for more mathematically stimulating problems with clear practical application. Citadel Securities gave me that. The options problem lent itself to more mathematical nuance. That was something I was really happy about because coming into the internship, I was more of a mathematician doing finance. The internship made me a trader who does math.

What interactions did you have with senior leaders at the firm?

All of the interns have a desk manager and a project manager. Then in most cases, there’s a secondary project manager who is dedicated to checking in with them, giving them feedback and making sure they’re coming along well with their work.

On top of that, every trader on every desk is encouraged to reach out to the interns, welcome them and offer their time for interns to shadow them. It was surprising how traders, who are otherwise constantly responding to incoming trade requests or on the phone, were so open to taking an hour of their time to explain what they were doing at the simplest possible level of detail.

What about the firm’s culture stood out to you?

One characteristic I encountered here that was not something I found in college or that my friends described from their internships at other places is the intensity with which Citadel employees approach even their hobbies.

There are plenty of people who enjoy playing chess in their free time, and then there are chess grandmasters whom you’ll meet here. There are people who took Spanish in high school, and then there are people here who speak six languages. Everyone takes their interests to such a complete extent with a drive for optimization and constant improvement. I think that permeates the entire environment, and everyone here applies that to the finance problems we approach together as a firm.

Everyone’s applying that intensity to get to the best answer?

Yes. Everyone applies their passion for optimization to the problem or problems that they’re facing here. It’s a special thing to see people from disparate academic backgrounds come together with that same spirit and each one contributes a polished piece of the puzzle that is our trading system. You have our engineers who are just very strong engineers, the traders who can monetize, using the tools that the engineers build and QR who gives us fair value models. These are all people who take their interests as far as they can go and even further. They are now all working together toward the same goal.

What’s the top reason you’d recommend someone become an intern at Citadel Securities?

I think you get a more complete picture of the firm when you’re interning here than you will elsewhere. I’ve heard from my friends who intern at other firms that they’re given some problem of lesser business relevance and left to work on it. Then, at the end of the summer, they’re boiled down to some series of metrics to decide if they should get a return offer or not. We take a completely different approach with our internship than other places.

As an employee now, I know that we spend weeks leading up to the internship coming up with the projects we want to give interns, assuring that there’s strong relevance to the business and planning all of the events. The education series the interns go through, all of it to make sure that interns will be on a steep learning curve for the 11 weeks they’re here, while they’re also contributing as much as an intern can to the business.