Jobs › Jump Trading

Campus Data Engineer (Intern)

Jump Trading · Chicago, IL · Core Development

Posted Aug 14, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026

Apply at Jump Trading

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 Python project where you had to design something from scratch instead of gluing together existing libraries.

What they are checking: whether they can build real solutions rather than just wiring up packages, matching the posting's emphasis on solving problems from scratch

Tell me about a time you had to learn a new part of a codebase quickly to fix or extend it.

What they are checking: adaptability and ramp-up speed, since interns must contribute to production code fast

Tell me about a time you shipped something imperfect because the deadline mattered more than polish.

What they are checking: fit with a fast-paced, deploy-daily environment and comfort with iteration over perfection

Tell me about a time you disagreed with a teammate or mentor about how to implement something. What happened?

What they are checking: ability to collaborate and take feedback, since the internship is built around close mentorship

Why data engineering specifically, and why here, given you don't need a finance background for this role?

What they are checking: genuine motivation and whether they understand the role isn't about finance knowledge but about infrastructure craft

What would you do

Imagine a data pipeline you built starts silently dropping records overnight. How would you go about finding the cause?

What they are checking: debugging instincts and systematic thinking under a production-like scenario

What does a good code review look like to you, both giving and receiving one?

What they are checking: readiness to work inside a team practicing agile, daily-deploy development

About the work

Say you have a Python program that needs to read from three different data sources at once without blocking. How would you approach it, and what threading or concurrency model would you use?

What they are checking: real understanding of threading models, not just textbook definitions

What data structure would you pick to deduplicate millions of records efficiently, and why?

What they are checking: depth of data structures knowledge and ability to reason about tradeoffs at scale

How do you think about ensuring data integrity when the same dataset is used by many different teams across a firm?

What they are checking: awareness of downstream consequences and firm-wide data quality thinking

Describe your experience running Python on Linux. What kind of environment issues have you had to debug there?

What they are checking: hands-on comfort with the actual platform they'll work on, not just familiarity in theory

How have you used AI coding tools like Claude Code in your own projects, and where did you have to double check or override what it gave you?

What they are checking: whether they use AI tools critically rather than blindly trusting generated code

If you had a database table growing by millions of rows a day and queries were slowing down, what would you look at first?

What they are checking: practical database management instincts under scale

Practice this interview out loud.

Offer builds a real interview for this exact role at Jump Trading from your resume and this job description, asks the questions one at a time, and tells you what landed. The first one is free.

Practice this out loud

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. Jump Trading has a global team of technologists who architect, build and maintain our world-class trading platform. From optimizing our core trading engine to building custom hardware, we leverage software & hardware engineering, sophisticated front-end technologies, data science and research, to deliver the infrastructure and tools that drive our trading and business needs. What You’ll Do: Our data engineering internship is an intensive 10-week experience with our team who is responsible for developing and maintaining the infrastructure and pipelines to support data for firm wide use. You will be working side by side with our experienced data engineers and you’ll receive ongoing feedback and coaching from a dedicated mentor throughout the summer. Our internship program is the primary way we identify top engineers and it’s a proven path for earning full-time opportunities at Jump.  You will take on projects working on production code and gain experience with our full-cycle process for development, testing, and release using Agile methodologies. You will apply your programming and analysis skills to maintain and develop our firm wide data solutions. Other duties as assigned or needed.  Skills You’ll Need: Hands-on experience and a high level of proficiency in one or more of the following:  • Python development on Linux platform  • Strong understanding of data structures and threading models  • Ability to work with a team in a fast-paced environment, deploying new software daily  • Passion for solving complex problems and learning to build optimal solutions from scratch, instead of simply assembling things from existing libraries  • Interest in using knowledge from several areas -- such as data pipelining and database management -- to ensure firm wide data integrity  • Comfortability with Claude Code  • Reliable and predictable availability  * No finance or economics study or work experience required  Also helpful, but not required:  • Past internship or job experience in a data engineering role is a plus  • Advanced coursework in algorithms & data structures  • Exposure to data analytics tools such as Pandas  INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS are encouraged to apply. We accept students eligible for CPT/OPT and we sponsor work visas for full-time positions.  The estimated base salary for this role is $250,000 per year.

Apply at Jump Trading

More data engineer roles