INTERNS +

CO-OPS

It didn’t hit me until I saw the Center City skyline. I had just recovered from covid, frantically packed, and spent a sleepless night on a redeye flight, but I couldn’t stop smiling. In a few hours, I was at the office being introduced to dozens of other interns. I’d never connected with a group of people so fast. I met fellow SET lovers, a youtuber who makes content for my favorite game, crossword fiends, quiz bowlers, and overall some of the smartest and most interesting people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.

I thought that the sparkle of the new people, city, and work would wear off over time, but every single day I felt lucky to be here at Susquehanna. Everyone I interacted with at work, from educators to traders, was genuinely invested in my personal and professional growth. I was always encouraged to learn and explore, and do the work that most benefitted me. The traders around me, especially my mentor Alec, made my time on the desk invaluable. They were so generous with their time and patient, even to someone like me who came in with no finance experience.

I hope future interns remember how privileged they are to be here and to make the most of out the experience. Talk to everyone, see the city, don’t take anything for granted and have fun!

For most people, the trading industry is pretty hard to understand at first glance. My friends and family would always ask me what a trading internship entails, and I’d always respond with an embarrassing “I don’t really know.” But over the course of the last ten weeks, I really got to understand what the role of a trader really is, and I had a great internship experience along with it.

To give some context, a trading role mostly involves making markets (posting buy prices and sell prices) for customers (such as those of you on Robinhood!) on different securities (options, stocks, ETFs, etc.). Basically, a trader provides liquidity to the market exchanges.

For the first five weeks of the internship, I was placed on the index vol desk during the morning, and we rotated to afternoon desk in the second half of the internship. Since everything was new at the time, I had a lot of questions to ask the traders around me, and they were all super willing to help out. It gave me a hands-on perspective on what the life of a trader would be like. We talked about everything from trading strategies to pick-up basketball games before work; from market effects and decision making to poker hand analysis. It gave me a good idea about life both inside and outside the office as a Susuqehanna trader.

During lunch, all the interns have a chance to eat together, talk about their day or plans for the night, and play a variety of games with each other to pass the time and relax. A ton of interns go to the big poker table to play poker games, but some others choose to play chess or SET.

Afterwards, we had an education session (afternoon for the first five weeks, morning for the second five weeks). The first half of education was dedicated to options theory. Though I’d taken options classes before, the way Susuqehanna taught everything so in-depth made me understand the important concepts in a much more confident manner than before. The second half was dedicated to mock trading, which gives us a chance to take on the role of a trader and buy or sell different options in a real-time market. The instructors are always friendly and happy to answer questions, which made the experience that much more enjoyable. Some of the instructors would even join us at the poker table after work, which was really nice as well.

After work, a lot of the interns would get dinner with each other and go to different activities (gaming café, arcade, museum, or bar). We have a big GroupMe group chat where a lot of interns coordinate get-togethers and activities, so there’s never really a time where you don’t have a chance to do something fun. Susquehanna also sets up intern-wide events in Philadelphia that brings everyone together every few weeks or so.

The day-to-day work at Susquehanna varies just as much as the markets we trade. I can fairly confidently say that no two days over the summer were identical, and that almost no day went exactly as I had pictured it when I woke up. This was something I enjoyed – the work was never monotonous, and ever-changing markets kept us all on our toes and threw up a constant pace of opportunities to both learn and contribute in a real way.

All of the projects assigned to interns are extraordinarily discretionary – my mentors worked around my strengths and interests to assign projects that were both interesting to me and were final products that contributed in a tangible way (a sentiment that was not shared by friends in other internships). However, by far, my favorite part of the learning experience was the environment. Every day on the trading floor, I was surrounded by experienced and incredibly intelligent colleagues; I learned massive amounts about markets, sectors, and companies simply from being present and listening to the conversations around me, along with those colleagues answering any question I asked. I am lucky enough to be able to return to Susquehanna, and one of the things that excites me most is to be able to head back into that environment for work every day.

I interned as an Operations Analyst, where I primarily focused on mastering SQL, VBA, and Python. This internship is a great fit for you if you want to learn how to code at a professional level. If you are already a coding pro, Susquehanna has an innovative culture where there is no limit on the impact you can have on the business.

I studied Economics and Statistics in college and learned more about how markets actually work in ten weeks at Susquehanna than I learned in four years at school. Susquehanna makes it very easy to come into the office every day and makes the environment super supportive and open for young people just starting out.

I started as an intern two summers ago, and I have been working as a full-time quant for a little over a year.

As an intern I was (and still am) extremely impressed with Susquehanna’s company culture. My mentor and collaborators were extremely smart and hardworking, but also easy to get along with and gave me lots of valuable feedback. The work is obviously a slightly different flavor than being a grad student, but I think it’s challenging and engaging. The work is a bit faster-paced, but the research skills I learned as a grad student are very applicable.

Living near Center City in Philadelphia was great, there’s plenty to do and restaurants to try, most of which are walkable. Currently I live outside the city for a bit more quiet and shorter commute, but it’s nice to be able to visit whenever I want. I was also very pleasantly surprised with the amount of outdoor activities within a few hours drive.

My time at Susquehanna started by learning the architecture related to my team’s system and understanding how the different aspects of the system interact with one another. As part of this process, I also began working through my first few tickets where I got to learn more about the data and how it flows through our system. I then got to see my changes reflected in our production environment and used by other teams within the firm.

When I initially came into the co-op, I mainly programmed in a language I had no experience in, while also learning about other technologies my team used for software development. In addition to the technical side of Susquehanna, I also got to work with the business professionals and traders at Susquehanna who taught me more about trading and the different terms that are associated with it; I gained a better understanding of the work I was doing and Susquehanna as an organization.

As my co-op went on, I was tasked with my own projects. I gained valuable insight in not only this technology but also debugging and problem-solving skills. Overall, Susquehanna was the best co-op I could have possibly asked for as it taught me valuable technological skills while also allowing me to grow as a developer.

As a Philly-area native and aspiring engineer, I was thrilled to participate in Susquehanna’s internship program. I had the chance to explore the city in new ways; exploring with other interns, living in a hotel downtown, and through the MANY fun events planned by recruiting. A personal favorite was the wine and cheese networking night with women from across the company. 

I was placed on a team that builds in-house software for traders to manage orders. The team was exceedingly supportive and happy to spend time teaching me new skills and gave me meaningful work to take ownership of throughout the summer. There’s a lot of satisfaction in having your end-users in the same building as you – instant feedback from traders made the project feel impactful despite only having 10 weeks to develop it.