Research Scientist/Research Engineer, Reinforcement Learning

Jump TradingChicago, IL
$200,000 - $350,000

About The Position

Jump Trading Group is committed to world-class research, empowering exceptional talents in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science to seek scientific boundaries, push through them, and apply cutting-edge research to global financial markets. Our culture is unique, fostering constant innovation through fearlessness, creativity, intellectual honesty, and a relentless competitive streak. We believe in winning together and unlocking unique individual talent by incentivizing collaboration and mutual respect. At Jump, research outcomes drive more than superior risk-adjusted returns; we design, develop, and deploy technologies that change our world, fund start-ups across industries, and partner with leading global research organizations and universities to solve problems. Our team is a group of quantitative researchers, engineers, and ML experts leading reinforcement learning research and trading at Jump. Our mission is to combine emerging techniques and original research to learn optimal decision-making policies from financial market data and monetize them globally. We are building the future of ML-powered trading through breakthrough reinforcement learning, and we're looking for an exceptional Research Scientist/Research Engineer to join our team.

Requirements

  • 5+ years of experience developing reinforcement learning and/or deep learning systems with measurable impact in industry and/or academia
  • Depth in reinforcement learning, including experience designing reward formulations, policy architectures, and evaluation, and taking RL methods from research into production
  • Proficiency in Python and/or C++
  • Familiarity with ML libraries/frameworks such as PyTorch (preferred), TensorFlow, and/or JAX
  • Strong foundation in mathematics and statistics
  • PhD or Master's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics (or a related subject)
  • Strong publication record at ICML, ICLR, AAAI, NeurIPS, CVPR, or equivalent
  • Ability to thrive in a collaborative, team-oriented environment
  • Creative thinkers who are driven, self-motivated, and eager to solve challenging problems
  • Reliable and predictable availability
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English

Responsibilities

  • Conduct original research and own the systems that turn it into production trading.
  • Design and evaluate policy architectures, reward formulations, and objective horizons with rigorous out-of-sample benchmarking.
  • Partner with trading and research teams to source, integrate, and validate their alpha signals within the RL framework.
  • Ensure simulation fidelity against live trading by modeling market microstructure, fill dynamics, liquidity, and latency.
  • Build efficient tooling to store, process, and analyze very large volumes of market and signal data.
  • Communicate findings to technical and trading audiences.
  • Other duties as assigned or needed.

Benefits

  • Discretionary bonus eligibility
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • HSA, FSA, and Dependent Care options
  • Employer Paid Group Term Life and AD&D Insurance
  • Voluntary Life & AD&D insurance
  • Paid vacation plus paid holidays
  • Retirement plan with employer match
  • Paid parental leave
  • Wellness Programs
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