I am completely new to this and so is my extended family. Currently an undergrad in CS and Math at top 5 colleges. How do you break into Quant research fields as an undergrad? Most of these research positions seem to require a PhD. Do they start as a trading analyst or something else?
I have ML experience with health-related projects but no strong Math background like AIME/USAMO. What are the activities like Hackathons(assuming hackathons help) or any such activities that will help me break into Quant research?
1) If you're CS and Math at a top 5 school that is good, you can probably find many people at your school who are also trying to get into quant. What they know should be pretty useful / up to date.
As someone once said to me, you don't need a PhD to do QR but you do need experience in some form (undergrad research, a different Q* job, etc.).
Firms differ (the range of what being a QR / QT / Q* actually involves doing is incredibly wide and very firm dependent, from manual trading to alpha research to risk modeling to data engineering) and interviews / requirements differ accordingly. Your best bet is likely to just try to get any one of these and then see what you like, what you don't, and pivot if necessary now that your foot's in the door.
In general, firms try to cast a wide net when interviewing and if you get interviews then it's in your hands now and especially for new grad resume things don't matter all that much. They'll just ask a series of AIME / Leetcode / stats / etc. questions and if you pass you pass. You just need enough quant sounding things (AIME and any other contests like that are good of course) to get the interview then it's about how good / practiced you are for those kinds of questions.
I can't emphasize the firm specific part enough. At some firms QR can be not that interesting and the QTs will be doing the interesting / important stuff so pay attention when looking at specific firms.
Source: am QR that has interviewed QRs for some time.
How common do you think the route: graduation -> new grad big tech SWE -> QT/QR is ? Do I have to go to school for a Master or take any extra steps if I have ~ 1YOE at Faang and want to recruit ? Thanks !
It happens but not a ton since it doesn't really help. The opposite direction is probably more common. Just apply and see what happens
Thanks! Just to clarify, when you say it doesn't help; are you saying that Google SWE doesn't have to do math so they a) never got good enough or b) feel the need to switch to something with such diff skillsets? Because another way to read it is that maybe they are good and want to switch but their experience somehow count agains them and they good yanked when compared agains a fresh undergrad.
What's P(they're good enough after 1 year of SWE | they weren't good enough before 1 year swe)?
The average CS grad is their best at math when they graduate. That being said there's no reason this has to be true, anyone can go home
from work and do as much math as they want and get better, then when they get into quant having SWE experience makes certain tasks easier (since at the end of the day QRs are coding most of the day). And I know people that did that and switched. But the average person 1) doesn't want to do that or 2) finds some success in their SWE job, has good quality of life, and sees no reason to shake things up for possibly not much gain and a lot more risk. I like QR but it's just a job it's not like you're doing profound genius things all day, there's plenty of arguments for the quality of life / predictable growth in swe.
I find using P(x|y) while expressing your view funny.
Thank you.
May I ask if you know any top firms that have QR jobs in ML research? I am at the top schools which also means every kid is an AIME/USAMO kind of qualifier. They already have groups from high school and they will not allow folks like me or else I would not be asking in forums like these. Top schools mean nothing with my background, rather it makes it harder.
Radix is big on research ML, XTX, HRT AI labs. Maybe Jump. Voleon but they only hire PhDs. Be warned it is definitely harder to distinguish yourself in ML research because so much is based on experience, publications etc and competing against PhDs is much more difficult here than on say AIME questions. For other quant* stuff you can try to be like "I don't know anything but I'm smart and I'll figure it out please hire me" which is less convincing for ML research jobs. There's also relatively little of modern ML research being used in quant due to the terrible signal to noise ratio of any financial data besides extremely HFT data.
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