Proprietary Trading Firms Recruit Technical Talent Online

While proprietary trading firms usually won't talk about their recruiting strategies, many utilize their Web sites to communicate job opportunities to potential candidates. Firms such as Sun Trading, Hudson River Trading and Spot Trading provide information on career paths, open positions, the firm's culture, skill requirements and benefits on their official Web sites.

With offices in Chicago and London, proprietary trading shop and market making firm Sun Trading uses its Web site as a recruiting tool. The privately held firm is dedicated to algorithmic trading of various asset classes and trades on 50 different exchange platforms and electronic venues. Through its Web site, suntradingllc.com, Sun Trading speaks directly to potential candidates, noting that it offers "on-the-job-training ... and third-party resources" to develop employees. According to the site, new employees also are paired with an experienced employee as part of a mentoring program. The firm also says that it encourages employees to continue their education through tuition reimbursement and company-paid professional training. In its Chicago office, the firm lists job openings for a C++ software developer, quantitative trader, recruiting manager, senior KDB/Q support administrator and trading system administrator, among other positions.

According to its Web site, Hudson River Trading, a proprietary trading firm that develops automated trading algorithms using advanced mathematical and statistical techniques, participated in career fairs in fall '09 at Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon, M.I.T., University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. The firm's site, hudson-trading.com, says it looks for candidates with "brilliant analytical and problem solving skills, the ability to work creatively and independently on long-term technical problems and familiarity with the C++ programming language." Currently, HRT lists openings for a systems administrator to manage Unix servers and networks in its data centers, an algorithm developer and a software engineer. The algorithm developer must apply statistical analysis to "vast quantities of market and financial data" to produce predictive trading models as well as run models live on the firm's high-performance trading infrastructure, and analyze their daily performance to maintain ongoing profitability. Among the perks offered by HRT are daily catered breakfasts and lunches as well as panoramic views of New York City.

Spot Trading , a proprietary trading firm in Chicago specializing in options and options volatility strategies, also recruits on college campuses nationwide and offers opportunities to recent college graduates through its STP training programs in research, trading and software development, according to the firm's Web site, spottradingllc.com. Completion of the training program can lead to positions in the firm's research, trading or product and system architecture teams. Candidates are groomed for career paths as traders, equity analysts, senior developers, software architects or product managers.

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Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio