Transcript

Get to Know Us | Jane Street

My name is Alice, I work in institutional sales and trading as a software developer. I work in New York City and I started in 2018.

What did you study in school and how did it help you prepare for a job at Jane Street?

I studied computer science in school. I think it really helped build a solid foundation for all of the work that I do at Jane Street now.

Do I need experience in finance to apply?

You don’t need to know anything about finance before working at Jane Street. I definitely didn’t know anything and I’ve learned everything that I need to know on the job from my coworkers. I’d say you just need to be open minded and intellectually curious.

What types of projects do people work on during an internship?

The way that intern projects are picked is that the intern mentors will go through their real dev stacks and choose something that’s approximately six to eight weeks long. So this means that intern projects are real projects with real impact. When I was an intern, I got to see my project rolled out before the end of my internship and I had traders come up to me afterwards and say that they really liked the work that I did.

Did you use OCaml before working at Jane Street?

OCaml is actually the reason why I applied to Jane Street. I learned OCaml in school and I really loved it. And I knew that Jane Street used functional programming in the real world. So I applied to Jane Street, not because of the finance, but because I really loved OCaml and now I get to use it every single day.

How did you learn OCaml and Jane Street’s libraries?

Even though I already knew OCaml, I still had to learn a lot about Jane Street’s libraries and infrastructure, which was a really great experience because Jane Street’s built so much curriculum and has a lot of experience teaching people.

What is the culture at Jane Street like?

The things that I really enjoy about Jane Street’s culture are that everyone’s really humble, everyone’s really willing to learn and to teach.

Who are your end users and where does your work go?

My end users are the institutional sales traders. They’re my colleagues and friends, and they sit just down the row from me. It really feels like when we’re working together, it’s a group collaboration.

What I love most about Jane Street is that there are so many opportunities to grow technically, but also make a big impact on the business.