The universities that will get you a $300k job at Citadel Securities
Citadel Securities is very selective for its coveted intern and graduate positions. Like other electronic trading firms, it hires from a range of top global universities... but some get more love than others.
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We've looked at social media profiles for ~1,500 Citadel Securities employees and found that, on paper, it has the same favourite university as Jane Street: MIT. The university produced at least 65 current Citadel Securities staff, predominantly in quant and trading roles.
The firm's second most popular university is one that didn't make Jane Street's rankings at all: Peking University. Citadel Securities' love for it likely stems from its CEO, Peng Zhao, who studied applied mathematics there before going on to do a PhD at Berkeley, which ranks sixth.
Other Peking alums at the firm include two partners, Wenjun Qiu and Xiangyi Huang, and head of research content Wei Zhou. The most recent alum to join is software engineer Chao Li, who spent the last eight years at Google. Impressive alums in the quant finance space outside of Citadel Securities include SMBC's head of global markets strats Ying Xu and Citadel PM-turned hedge fund founder Yingyong Chen.
Citadel Securities has been making a big deal of its move to Miami. There, Peking university alums are the most popular, followed by Caltech and MIT. In New York, home to Citadel Securities' largest office, Columbia University alums are most common.
For technologists and engineers, Citadel Securities echoes Jane Street's appreciation for the University of Waterloo. The university ranks number one for engineers at the firm and number four overall.
Recruitment is neither exclusively from these schools, nor preferential of them. Citadel Securities' head of campus recruitment Fabian Figi told Business Insider the firm is becoming "school agnostic" and targeting talent "wherever it exists in the world." Some of the most popular universities for Citadel Securities' 2024 intern class include Penn State and the University of Texas, which have smaller amounts of current full-time employees. MIT, Harvard and Carnegie Mellon were also big areas of recruitment for its 2024 class specifically.
Citadel Securities is looking more at what you are than where you are. You can distinguish yourself by being a chess champion or math Olympian, or by participating in trading competitions ran by firms in the space.
The real challenge begins if you make it in. Citadel Securities is thought to be very meritocratic and pays accordingly. Quant graduate roles pay up to $300k in salary alone, while engineering graduate roles pay up to $250k.
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