Q&A: The Internship Experience | Engineering

For someone not familiar with our internship program, how would you describe it?

One good word is fast paced. When I started my internship, I got to my desk and the very next day I started working on my project, which is very different from what I had experienced in previous internships where it would take a very long time to get started. It was very refreshing because as an intern you come in and you’re ready to start.

The other good way to describe the internship at Citadel is full of opportunities. You know, there’s always new problems that people are working on and something that sets our firm apart is that even as an intern, you’re able to contribute your own ideas into how you think the problem could be solved. And because of that, you get a lot more opportunities to contribute to different things that your team is working on.

How does the Citadel internship compare to other internship experiences you had?

Citadel was maybe the fourth or fifth place that I had interned. Compared to those internships, I can confidently say that I got to work on more real problems here than I did at other places. People aren’t giving you contrived problems just to see if you can solve them in your internship. That was the biggest thing I took away, I got to work on real problems and whatever I came up with to solve those problems is still being used today. That is a big distinguishing factor of the internship here. Whatever you work on as an intern is actually providing value; it’s not just busy work.

Tell us about the work you did, the project you worked on.

I actually got to work on three different projects. I’ll just highlight what the coolest one was in my opinion.

I got to design a distributed system from scratch. “From scratch” meaning there was absolutely no code there to begin with. And I got to sit down with some other people on my team and think through the design of the system.

What was your role?

My role was twofold. I was the one actually designing how the system was going to look and designing how the different components in the system were going to talk to each other. Obviously, I had a lot of help on that from other more senior and more experienced people on my team. But I think I had a big say in what that looked like. Writing the code was my main task after that.

Is this still being used in the business?

This is actually running as we speak, and it’s still being built on. In fact, I pushed a change to it yesterday. So, even five or six months after my internship, it’s still being used, still providing value and still being built on.

The people that I worked with had maybe 15, 20 years of experience in this field. You get to work with people who have tons of experience in whatever field that you’re working in, and they’re probably some of the smartest people in that field. They take your ideas and nudge you towards a better solution instead of, you know, immediately shooting you down and saying “that’s not a good way of doing this.” I think that was very rewarding for me because it teaches you how to think about problems rather than just being told what the solution is, memorizing that solution and doing it from then on.

What would be the top reason you’d recommend for someone to come be an intern here at Citadel Securities?

You get a lot of responsibility here as an intern and I think there’s a lot less handholding than there is at other places. People let you try and figure things out on your own before they step in and intervene. That’s probably what stood out to me the most. I think that’s also why I learned a lot here because you get to work on your project on your own. Obviously if you need help, you turn around and ask someone, but you get a lot of responsibility on the outcome of your project. Also you get a lot of responsibility on how you choose to work on your project.

Going back to your project for a second, any overall recollections to share?

Yes. I was a bit surprised when they told me what my project was because I was like, “Oh, wait, you’re telling an intern to do this?” Because from what I had experienced at my other internships, I wouldn’t have gotten such a significant project. It makes you feel great that people are able to recognize the hard work that you put in and you get rewarded with cool projects.