Getting into RenTech

From what I've heard, you're best bet is to go do an astrophysics PhD at MIT or something like that...

I don't even think they recruit finance/econ/account/bus. majors.

i think they might come get you if you're published and they think you're smart enough

usually you get head hunted from other industries / apply you don't need a phd but majority of them do because generally iq of a phd > non phd

I wouldn't be surprised if they have an algorithm that scans the resume drop for suitable candidates based on citations, etc.

Ever seen Men In Black? The selection process in that movie is based of RenTech recruiting

I knew a guy who worked for Axcom, which was rolled into RT. If you are smart enough to win Putnam, you may have a shot.

After hearing about that twitter based algo, I have no doubt that's true Jorge.

I have no idea if it would work, but try to get a teaching gig through Math for America and maybe you can kiss Jim Simons' ring when you fulfill your contract.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they look at these resume drops. It's not like there are hundreds of Math/Physics PhDs from Stanford/MIT applying every year....of course, that doesn't mean your chances are anything more than "shitty at best". Besides, I wonder if people who get in ever even really try. If you are one of the best in your field of academia, chances are you love what you do and don't go around looking for industry jobs....so yea they must be headhunted/referred for the most part

I just finished reading "The Quants", great book btw, and RenTech is mentioned a few times throughout. The author mentioned that of the 100 or so employees at RT something like 90 of them hold PhDs. The first couple of people hired to RT by Simons were speech recognition programmers from IBM. That sheds a little light on the kind of off-the-wall PhD types they are looking to hire.

Math is one way to get there, but you would probably be more successful in getting hired if you're field was very niche and obscure.

If anyone is qualified enough to work for RT then they most likely they already know about you.

Don't forget that these places are also a fit question. It's not about being the best of the best with honours, its about being part of their team. If they are mostly highy focussed academics who do things for the love of their subject, rather than having the hottest CV the world has ever seen they won't employ you. It's not about being hard to get into, it's about being the right fit as well. Examples cited above demonstrate that. I wouldn't apply, and wouldnt get it because I'm not academic enough. I have a physics degree from a top university, but didn't enjoy academia and have been promoted pretty fast at my current algo shop. I'd like to work there from a resources point of view, watched a Jim Simons speech and it inspired my current project, which certainly has the potential to do quite well.

I have been recruiting for rentech for over 10 years now. I do not doubt manbearpig at all. A few years back they would not even look at anyone with Wall Street experience know matter what your educational background was. That has relaxed a little, but it is still mainly fresh PhD's.

I don't want to go into too much detail over the forum, but 125 or so on the base is about average with the probablity of 250k all in for first year. Benefits are outstanding.

I live in the area where RenTech is based and know a number of people employed there. All PhDs, mostly physics or math. They like to hire astrophysicists due to their math skills especially in dealing with large numbers. I don't know a single person who works there who doesnt have a PhD, even some of the more back office type roles have PhDs.

As far as comp+benefits go, compensation is very very good, benefits are even better. Apparently they do company trips to the Caribbean for all the employees and their families.

You have a better chance of getting into NASA than RT.

Neural network use in hedgefunds specifically. I'm sure what I'm learning about in my MBA program was old hat years ago, but I'm interested in seeing how they function in these funds.

From the site:

Quantitative Finance

Renaissance Technologies, a quantitatively based financial management firm, has openings for research and programming positions at its Long Island, NY research center. Research & Programming Opportunities

We are looking for highly trained professionals who are interested in applying advanced methods to the modeling of global financial markets. You would be joining a group of roughly one hundred fifty people, half of whom have Ph.D.s in scientific disciplines. We have a spectrum of opportunities for individuals with the right scientific and computing skills. Experience in finance is not required.

The ideal research candidate will have:

A Ph.D. in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, or a related discipline
A demonstrated capacity to do first-class research
Computer programming skills
An intense interest in applying quantitative analysis to solve difficult problems

The ideal programming candidate will have:

Strong analytical and programming skills
An In depth knowledge of software development in a C++ Unix environment

Compensation is comprised of a base salary and a bonus tied to company-wide performance.

Send a copy of your resume to: [email protected] No telephone inquiries.

Renaissance Technologies is an equal opportunity employer.

i mean old-hat was like hidden markov models, simple neural nets with sigmoid activation functions....it's still sometimes eerie how well some of those can work. obviously can't talk about secret sauces here, but far more interesting methods exist out there that might work even better. the stuff that tends not to work so well are like the old-school ARIMA/GARCH stuff, though the elimination of the January effect is really funny.

the reason the CS guys are so important is because when you're looking at such a massive amount of crap you want your algo to be scalable and for the data structures to be efficient (i have no knowledge in this field)....

if you read More Money Than God, the two current guys that run RenTech made groundbreaking research in machine translation. in short, artificial intelligence guys would teach computers to learn French like a 7th-grader; grammar rules, exceptions, dictionary, etc....they said screw it, what we're going to do is feed it a Canadian government document that had been translated in both English and French. And then they had it scan it over and over and over again for correlations and rough translations.

And this kicked the shit out of the old method and caused a minor revolution in that field. Since then, who knows what they're up to. For RenTech, it obviously has worked amazingly well. They survived '07 and '08, and even crushed it in Medallion...whereas almost every other stat arb shop died violently.

^yeah rentech looks for you, not the other way around. good job on putnam though. for those who don't know it is a math comp where the modal score is 0.

my friend did a PhD in structural bioinformatics(specializing in bayesian methods) and got an offer from them. apparently, bayesian methods also have many applications in finance.

Obviously bayesian methods have an application in any cause and effect problem. I've been doing some thinking about where I ultimately want to end up (dream job) and I think RenTec is the answer. About to start a thread on this.

like zomg teh gamma function drools

Just so you guys know, RenTech doesn't pay its employees very well, so if you're thinking of pulling in typical large HF PM money, forget about it. I know of a seasoned veteran there that's only pulling in more or less 600k per year. But then again, 600k is a lot higher than however much Boeing or NASA, which are a lot of these scientists' alternatives, would be paying. I, of all people, know that money isn't everything, and I do realize that some of you want to be there for the mental stimulation/college department atmosphere, but to those thinking working at RenTech will immediately yield tens of millions, I would advise you to consider elsewhere.

solb is absolutely correct. Employee's comp is put into the fund.

I'll try to take a stab at your question. There's no real way to "prepare" for RenTech. The best advice I would give is for you to pick a technical field that you're HIGHLY interested in and have a natural knack for and go as much in depth as possible--i.e. get a PhD in it and be respected enough to be published (definitely not an easy feat).

RenTech is one of the most storied and successful hedge funds that has ever existed, and I'm not just talking about within the high frequency/algorithmic sphere. I truly believe one of the reasons it manages to remain successful and ahead of the curve is through hiring talent that other firms don't seek and attempt to exploit. If you don't already know, they tend to shun the economics and finance PhD graduates that other quant-focused shops like AQR or Citadel readily recruit and tend to go for the CS/math/astrophysics/physics/engineering types. Why? To find opportunities using strategies that other firms wouldn't attempt to and, more importantly, CAN'T replicate in order to maximize their profits.

Because Simons has attracted such varied talent throughout the years and synergized their individual talents into something much greater than the sum of the parts, he is, to me at least, the closest thing to a genius the finance world has had in the past few decades. I was reading The Quants by Patterson a while ago, and in one of the chapters, it talked about how when he had just started the Medallion Fund, he sniped two IBM researchers that specialized in SPEECH PATTERNS or the like, both of which ended up being instrumental in Medallion's earlier algorithms. And as you saw earlier in this thread, muras's friend did a PhD in bioinformatics, further showing the unorthodox hiring patterns of RenTech, at least relative to other firms within the hedge fund sphere.

Knowing that RenTech only looks at highly accomplished scientists and likes to snag freshly-minted PhDs, I don't think there's another job within the financial services that would serve as a stepping stone into RenTech. Just reiterating my earlier advice, if your heart is really set on RenTech, find a technical field that you love, and get really, really, good at it. Best of luck.

From a partner at a large HF "Getting a job at RenTech is like becoming an astronaut. Plenty of people are qualified enough to do the work and they are all extremely impressive. You have to be both exceedingly qualified and more lucky than anyone has a right to be"

^ DE Shaw is pretty damn competitive too. at my campus recruitment talk, they said "we want the top .01% of the top .01% of applicants. and from there we draw the top .01%"

Oh, so they interview a trillion people to find each candidate? Interesting...

poetic license

and yes i got dinged first round

They are both extremely competitive. Deshaw is more active on the recruiting front. Competing with Two Sigma, Citadel and then the larger props from Chicago. All of these firms put substantial resources into recruiting. Rentec...not so much.