Quant researcher at Citadel Securities: "I spent 4 years studying day and night"

If you're a quantitative student who wants to work for Citadel Securities, and you're not serious about the application process, then Chirag Falor, a newly hired quant researcher at the firm, will set you straight. 

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Falor joined Citadel Securities in Miami two months ago. His arrival there was the culmination of years of focus and hard grind. 

Falor grew up in India but won a place to study AI and physics at MIT in the US. If you want to do well in India, Falor says you need to be exceptional: competition between Indian students is particularly intense. To help stand out, he entered competitions like the International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics, for which he won a gold medal in 2019. Winning the Olympiad was a lesson in self-discipline and determination, says Chirag: "I spent four years studying day and night with the goal of performing well in the competition."

Citadel Securities receives tens of thousands of applications for well under 1,000 intern places and accepts significantly fewer than 1% of applicants. It's known to like students who've won Olympiad competitions. "In a standard year, 20-30 of our interns will have competed in one or more Olympiads,” Matt Mitro, Citadel's head of campus recruiting told us last year. Olympiad winners are a community of "exceptionally talented individuals," Mitro observed. 

Falor joined Citadel Securities as intern in summer 2024 and he converted that internship into his full term place. Before interning at Citadel Securities, he was an intern at rival electronic trading firm, Jane Street.

In both cases, Falor says his Olympiad credentials made a difference. “The success I had in the competitions I entered in India really helped when I was applying for internships and full-time roles,” he says. “A lot of the skills were transferable to the interview process – and I think what I accomplished in those competitions helped demonstrate my skills in math and physics, my ability to work as part of a team, and my interest in competing and being the best at what I do.” 

How to handle interviews at Citadel Securities 

Falor also had a strong approach to the various rounds of internship interviews he encountered at Citadel Securities. "My interviewers asked various questions related to math, computer science, and my research. I'd generally solve the problems on paper, and we'd talk through my thought process," he says.

The interview questions were both interesting and "good quality," says Falor. Like previous candidates at Citadel Securities, he tells us the questions themselves and the discursive nature of the interview helped convince him to join. "We'd often spend an hour or so solving problems and I'd continue to think about them afterwards.” 

Citadel Securities wants problem solvers, says Falor. But you don't have to solve their problems alone. - The interviews are a two-way process. "During the interview, they'd guide me if I was venturing off. I benefited a lot from the experience and came away with new perspectives on problem-solving," he recalls.   

You don't need to know about markets to be a quant researcher 

As a quant researcher (QR) at Citadel Securities, Falor says his job involves the application of statistical tools to data derived from the behaviour of traded securities. "We apply tools like linear regression or various other machine learning models to try and predict the future behavior of a given security." 

Although he'd won Olympiads and was proficient in AI techniques and physics, Falor says he knew comparatively little about financial services before his Citadel Securities internship. This didn't matter - "Many people come to Citadel Securities with no prior knowledge of markets. As a QR, as long as you have statistical intuition, experience working with data, and are familiar with conducting and applying research, the team will teach you everything you need to know about finance."

Citadel Securities paid for him to relocate to Miami and Falor says his early impressions of his new location are favourable: his apartment is a five-minute walk to the office and the airport is only 15 minutes away. This helps when it comes to visiting friends who are at grad school or working in other cities.

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