November 09, 2024
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Engineers from our team answer some of our candidates’ frequently asked questions.
Confidence and a commercial mindset Markets move quickly. Therefore, being able to operate with a self-sufficient, can-do attitude is essential. You should feel comfortable making decisions, assessing risk and trusting your intuition as you design systems.
Quick learning and comfort with ambiguity You must possess the ability to learn quickly, adapt and be comfortable operating in unfamiliar situations. Often, we are building solutions for issues and opportunities we identify in real time. We want candidates who are excited about this lack of definition and who thrive in an environment of continuous learning.
Problem solving You will face challenging, sometimes ambiguous problems. But if you’re a motivated problem solver, you can tap into the best tools and available resources, including exceptional teammates who want to see you succeed.
Technical proficiency Excellence is a baseline—you need to be an amazing engineer. But you don’t necessarily need to be an expert in specific technologies on day one; we’ll teach you. We want talented engineers who want to learn, master new skills and continue to raise the bar together.
Ownership We encourage initiative. People who take responsibility and accountability for projects grow the fastest.
Citadel operates at such a massive data scale that it would be impossible for this business to run without incredible software engineers. Our mission is to be the most successful investment team in the world. Software engineers are critical to accomplishing that mission.
Data is constantly flooding in, and it’s up to us to turn it into valuable, actionable information that is easy to consume—from ingesting the data, to computing the underlying analytics and designing the user interface, and everything in between. Our business partners are often truly impressed the first time they see the systems we design.
Bottom line, software engineers at Citadel enable investors and traders to focus on the markets. In turn, we get to focus on building technology. We ensure that all of our systems work together while we’re also keeping in mind future possibilities—not just today’s challenges. It results in a true partnership with the business rather than a top-down approach where one party dictates needs and another simply executes. Instead, we play to our strengths and problem solve together, and that allows us to succeed as a team.
Our job is to be forward looking. We build technology that will support us ten years in the future. Therefore, we seek to build solutions that can support multiples of the trading volume today and ensure business continuity even in times of market volatility.
Our process is simple; we start with business goals and build technology solutions to achieve them. For example:
Learning opportunities We’re lucky to work with brilliant teammates at a scale where the opportunity to collaborate, even with senior leaders, is unrivaled. Learning and growth are an everyday experience, rather than a one-off training session. Everyone we work with is extremely smart, driven and focused on achieving results. Our scale also allows us to keep the bar consistently high and bring on only the most extraordinary people.
Rapid production cycles We have rapid software life cycles. Our team members thrive on the opportunity to innovate and execute as they continually pursue new, better ways of working. At a tech firm, it may take months to see work come to fruition, but our engineers can quickly see their impact.
Innovation Our engineers are hardly ever given a document that says, “Here’s what you should build.” Instead, a trader can describe a problem they have or the opportunity they want to capture. Our engineers get to ask questions, clarify the issue and then build a technical solution that’s stronger because they understand the business issue they are solving for.
Technology is at the very heart of what we do. Engineering is not a support function. We are responsible for building technical solutions that directly impact business outcomes.
We work as partners with the business, eliminating the middlemen and working in collaboration to innovate and develop creative, commercial solutions. From the top of the organization down, engineering is treated as the lifeblood of the firm.
