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Campus AI Research Engineer – Research Automation (Intern)

Jump Trading · Chicago, IL · Front Office

Posted Aug 18, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026

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Likely interview questions for this role

Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.

About your past

Walk me through a research project you took from a rough idea to something that actually ran end to end. What did the messy middle look like?

What they are checking: whether the candidate can own an open-ended project rather than just execute a well-specified task

Tell me about a paper or open-source project you contributed to. What was your specific contribution, and what would you do differently if you started over?

What they are checking: depth of the candidate's research contributions versus being a bystander on a team effort

Tell me about a time your model or approach didn't work and you had to figure out why, when there wasn't an obvious bug.

What they are checking: debugging discipline and intellectual honesty when results don't match expectations

Describe a time you disagreed with a more senior researcher or teammate about a technical approach. How did you handle it?

What they are checking: ability to hold a position with evidence while still collaborating well on a small team

What's an opinion you hold about ML tooling or research practices that not everyone agrees with?

What they are checking: whether the candidate has formed independent, defensible views versus just following convention

What would you do

You need to integrate a trained model into a system where every microsecond of latency matters. What tradeoffs would you think about between model complexity and inference speed?

What they are checking: whether the candidate understands production constraints beyond academic model accuracy

If you were designing a reusable framework that multiple researchers on a team would build models on top of, what would you prioritize to make it actually get adopted instead of ignored?

What they are checking: engineering pragmatism and awareness that infrastructure only matters if researchers will use it

If you had a strict compute budget and had to choose between training a bigger model longer or iterating faster on a smaller one, how would you decide?

What they are checking: judgment about research tradeoffs under real resource constraints, not just theoretical preference

This role means unpredictable hours tied to research problems, not a typical internship schedule. What does reliable availability look like for you day to day?

What they are checking: whether expectations about commitment and schedule match the intensity of the role

About the work

Suppose you have a training pipeline that's underutilizing your GPU cluster. How would you go about figuring out where the bottleneck is?

What they are checking: practical skill diagnosing performance issues rather than just theoretical ML knowledge

Explain how attention works in a transformer to someone who understands linear algebra but hasn't read the papers.

What they are checking: depth of understanding of core architecture versus surface-level familiarity with buzzwords

Have you written CUDA or other low-level GPU code before? Tell me about a specific kernel or optimization you worked on and what made it faster.

What they are checking: real hands-on low-level GPU experience versus just having used high-level frameworks

Have you worked with sequence models beyond standard transformers, like state space models? What tradeoffs have you noticed between them?

What they are checking: breadth of modern architecture knowledge beyond the most commonly taught models

How comfortable are you moving between Python and C++ in the same project? Tell me about a time you had to do that.

What they are checking: real multi-language fluency needed to bridge research code and production systems

Practice this interview out loud.

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The full job description

As published by Jump Trading.

Jump Trading Group is committed to world class research. We empower 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. Constant innovation requires fearlessness, creativity, intellectual honesty, and a relentless competitive streak. We believe in winning together and unlocking unique individual talent by incenting 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 trading teams are each comprised of a dynamic group of traders, quantitative researchers, and engineers who work together to examine the global markets, seeking to understand the complexities of various traded products and exchanges. They leverage their impeccable statistical analysis and data mining skills, using the results of their research to make forecasts and develop profitable predictive trading models. We are seeking research scientists with a demonstrated ability to apply machine learning to achieve&nbsp;state-of-the-art&nbsp;capabilities in complex and challenging domains. The ideal person for this role will be capable of implementing an open-ended research project from concept to production and continuously improving model design, tools, and infrastructure. Potential projects may target any area of the quantitative research and monetization process. We believe that successful research efforts require a fluid mix of skills including&nbsp;AI/ML&nbsp;expertise, engineering pragmatism,&nbsp;statistics, and market&nbsp;intuition. &nbsp; What You'll Do: &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="8" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="8" data-aria-level="1"> Apply&nbsp;state-of-the-art&nbsp;techniques to complex and challenging domains. &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="8" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="9" data-aria-level="1"> Work closely with researchers and quants to build flexible and reusable frameworks for financial ML. &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="8" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1"> Optimize&nbsp;training pipelines to make the best use of our HPC resources. &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="8" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="11" data-aria-level="1"> Integrate ML models into production systems where latency matters. &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="8" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="12" data-aria-level="1"> Work across a mix of programming languages: C / C++ / Python / CUDA and other low-level GPU languages. &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="8" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="13" data-aria-level="1"> Build&nbsp;large-scale&nbsp;ML systems that are observable, performant, and flexible. Help improve productivity by reducing the iteration cycle time on research. &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="8" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="14" data-aria-level="1"> Other duties as assigned or needed. &nbsp; &nbsp; Skills You'll Need: &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="9" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="9" data-aria-level="1"> Strong publication record at ICML, ICLR, AAAI,&nbsp;NeurIPS, UAI, KDD, or equivalent and/or contributions to open-source AI research &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="9" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="10" data-aria-level="1"> Strong general ML background with exposure to modern deep learning techniques and/or language modeling architectures (e.g.&nbsp;transformers, SSMs) &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="9" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="11" data-aria-level="1"> Solid development skills in Python and/or C++ &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="9" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="12" data-aria-level="1"> Familiarity with ML libraries/frameworks such as&nbsp;PyTorch, JAX, and/or TensorFlow &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="9" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="13" data-aria-level="1"> Intellectual curiosity, versatility, and originality combined with a pragmatic outlook &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="9" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="14" data-aria-level="1"> Ability to thrive in a collaborative, team-oriented environment &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="9" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="15" data-aria-level="1"> Ability to reason through quantitative problems and communicate effectively with trading researchers &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="9" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="16" data-aria-level="1"> Reliable and predictable availability &nbsp; &nbsp; Bonus Points: &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="10" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="5" data-aria-level="1"> Experience with HPC and distributed large model training &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="10" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="6" data-aria-level="1"> Experience with GPU performance optimization (CUDA or&nbsp;ROCm) &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="10" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="7" data-aria-level="1"> Experience with end-to-end model development &nbsp; <li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="10" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="8" data-aria-level="1"> Strong opinions on best practices in ML research, tooling, and/or infrastructure &nbsp; &nbsp; INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS are encouraged to apply. We accept students eligible for CPT/OPT&nbsp;and we sponsor work visas for full-time positions. &nbsp; The estimated base salary for this role&nbsp;(annualized)&nbsp;is $300,000 per year. &nbsp;

Apply at Jump Trading