Matt on Machine Learning and Trading at Jane Street

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Matt, a trader on Jane Street’s Hong Kong equities desk, discusses applying machine learning to financial data and the infrastructure needed to process it. He also describes collaboration among traders, researchers and developers, and the distinction between ML engineering and research roles.

1A smaller office, broader exposureMatt says Hong Kong’s smaller office gives people exposure to different areas and often more room to take responsibility.
2Financial data changes the problemFinancial data is often noisier than other kinds of data and exists in large quantities. Jane Street has built infrastructure to process it, using Python and OCaml.
3Collaboration across rolesMatt sits with researchers and developers, and colleagues often gather around a desk to discuss research.
4Two machine learning tracksML engineers build infrastructure and tools; ML researchers use those tools to conduct research. Matt says the firm is interested in candidates with prior ML experience.

Das Wichtigste

The smaller Hong Kong office can offer exposure to different areas and opportunities to take responsibility.
Financial data is often noisy and plentiful, requiring techniques and infrastructure suited to its properties.
Jane Street’s research infrastructure uses Python extensively alongside OCaml.
Traders, researchers and developers collaborate closely on research.
ML engineering focuses on infrastructure and tools, while ML research focuses on using those tools for research.

ThemenMachine Learning KI im Finanzwesen Careers Company Culture

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From New York to Hong Kong

Matt introduces his trading role and move to Hong Kong. He values the exposure and responsibility available in a smaller office.

I’m Matt, a trader on the Hong Kong equities desk. I started in New York in 2012 and moved to Hong Kong a couple of years later. Since Jane Street started in New York, that office is much bigger; in Hong Kong, I get more exposure to different areas and often more room to take on responsibility, which I find exciting.

Machine learning on financial data

Matt explains how noisy, abundant financial data shapes the work and the tools it requires. He describes the firm’s growing ML effort.

The main difference between working on machine learning at Jane Street and at some large technology companies is the class of problems. We focus on financial data rather than, for example, language data. Financial data has different properties: it is often noisier, which makes the techniques somewhat different.

There is also a huge amount of financial data, so we need a lot of tooling to process it. We have built strong infrastructure for that. Most of our research infrastructure is in Python, though we also do a lot in OCaml.

We’re excited to grow our machine learning efforts and expand the team globally. It’s an exciting time to join because this is one of our fastest-growing areas.

Collaboration and ML careers

Traders, researchers and developers work together. Matt outlines the engineering and research tracks and explains what he enjoys about the work.

Jane Street has a collaborative culture. People from different groups sit together: I’m a trader, but I sit with researchers and developers, and we collaborate. It’s common to see several people gathered around someone’s desk discussing interesting research.

We welcome candidates from a variety of backgrounds, but for ML roles in particular we’re interested in people with some prior ML experience. We have two tracks: ML engineering focuses on infrastructure and building tools, while ML research focuses on using those tools to do research.

My favourite part of working here is probably my co-workers. I also find the problems we work on very interesting. Sometimes I work on them at the weekend, not because anyone asks me to, but because I’m interested in them.