Campus Quantitative Researcher, PhD (Intern)
Jump TradingAbout the Role
The PhD quant research internship is an intensive 10-week program designed to show you what it's like to do research at Jump Trading. You'll work on real problems with real data and real markets during Summer 2027 in Chicago and New York offices. The first two weeks focus on training in research process, machine learning, statistics, trading and market mechanics, Python, and infrastructure. You'll then be matched with a trading team to spend the remaining weeks working 1:1 with experienced researchers on a real-world project tied to live business needs.
- 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 and engineer features that turn raw data into predictive signal
- Build, fit, and evaluate models on a supercomputing grid, and present results to your team throughout the summer
- Receive daily 1:1 mentorship from experienced quant researchers, with growing autonomy and compute as the summer progresses
Requirements
- 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
- Ownership of your research: the ability to explain the choices you made, the alternatives you considered and rejected, and why your approach won
- 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
What You'll Get
- $300k+ base salary
- The internship is one of the main pathways to a full-time offer at Jump Trading
- INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS are encouraged to apply
- We accept students eligible for CPT/OPT
- We sponsor work visas for full-time positions
- Focused training covering our research process, machine learning, statistics, trading and market mechanics, Python, and the infrastructure you'll use all summer
- Daily 1:1 mentorship from experienced quant researchers
- Growing autonomy and compute as the summer progresses