Algo Software Engineer - On Campus Recruiting 2023

At HRT, we program computers to intelligently trade on the stock market. We make the world’s markets more financially efficient using smart algorithms. To get the job done, we hire some of the smartest computer scientists in the world to develop both our low latency trading platform and our massive distributed research platform.

Algo Software Engineers (AE) are programmers that work hand-in-hand with Algo Strategy Developers (AD). Whereas ADs tend to use their math skills to make smarter strategies, AEs focus on the software that powers trading and research. Because of this close collaboration, AEs tend to be the type of engineers that thrive on constant interaction and discussion. Hearing how their most recently deployed system allowed for whole new types of research would make their week. AEs are the type of engineers that don’t mind juggling a few projects at once and have a varied portfolio of project types, from long-term ambitious new systems to fire-fighting live issues.

Our environment is particularly well suited to driven, self-motivated programmers. For one, the company’s Partners are all programmers. Team Leads spend a majority of their time doing technical work. Algo teams run on a very bottom-up approach that encourages everyone on the teams to come up with ideas and dictate the direction of each team together. Finally, there is very little emphasis placed on project management process (almost no meetings and no project managers) and there is a lot of emphasis placed on engineering process such as automated testing, design/code reviews, and technical training.

We are a Linux/Unix shop with a codebase written primarily in C++ and Python. If you are not a C++ or Python or Linux expert, that’s probably OK. We really care more about your technical fundamentals, practical experience and that intense desire to make things better for other people. That being said, we want someone who is familiar with a non-scripting language such as C++ or Java.

Here are a few examples of programmers who are currently AEs at HRT:

• When he’s not solving riddles and dancing salsa, David’s writing distributed computing APIs. He regularly solves bugs like “one out of a million jobs are dying on only these machines and only on Tuesdays”. He likes bridging the gap between Algo Strategy Developers and Systems Engineers to explore how to use distributed computing to run research. He really enjoys coming up with ways to make millions of jobs more efficient.
• Sherry worked in both big tech and fintech before joining HRT. She enjoys being able to combine her programming skills with her math skills, something that she found was lacking at big tech. She gets joy from her teammates' happiness when they are able to gain more insight into their trading, from building tools to improve automation, to exposing previously hard to quantify data, and to doing some data analysis. When she's not coding, Sherry can be found at an (online) bridge table, either playing with friends or doing solo puzzles.
• Aaron started programming at age 5 and previously ran the research team at a music software company, bringing over 7 years of experience to HRT. He cooks and practices partner acrobatics in his free time. He gets joy from his teammates’ happiness when their research runs twice as fast, from building them tools that help them visualize their strategies, and from keeping code organized and maintainable. He's gotten coworkers from other teams involved in latency improvements to his group's live trading. He enjoys the collaborative environment and learning from his coworkers.

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