"I was a software engineer. I became a quant researcher at Citadel Securities"

Yuliia Suprun is a quant researcher (QR) at Citadel Securities in New York. Like other quant researchers, her role involves the statistical analysis of data relating to Citadel Securities' market making business. Unlike some quant researchers, though, Yuliia tried software engineering jobs first. 

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"When I first interned at Citadel Securities, it was as a software engineer," she says. "I'd already interned as a software engineer at Two Sigma, and I was interested in coding, but after being exposed to so many different teams during my Citadel Securities internship, I realized that I'd like to try research."

Suprun therefore returned to Citadel Securities the following summer and interned as a QR instead. "My project was focused on improving a component related to how we supervise our systematic strategy," she says. "It required knowledge of both statistics and machine learning. I was trying to identify trends in a new product area and was able to use historic simulations. It was very interesting and gave me a surprising level of responsibility." 

Quant research is sometimes seen as a more prestigious job than software engineering, but Suprun is adamant that this isn't so. “Engineering and quantitative research are both great paths, but there are differences,” she reflects.

Suprun says she personally opted for QR over software engineering because research jobs allow for more creativity. - “I found that I enjoyed being more creative and having the freedom to explore how to solve a problem." Nonetheless, she says her software engineering background serves her well. 

Suprun studied mathematics and computer science at Rice University, followed by a Masters in computer science at Rice, in which she focused on AI and robotics. 

Citadel Securities doesn't require its quant researchers to know about markets, but Suprun says she was already interested in economics, which helped. If you want to work in QR, she says you'll need a much stronger statistics background than pure software engineers. Having been through both sets of interviews at Citadel Securities, she says quant research interviews are much mathematically and statistics focused. Predictably, software engineering interviews are about "solving coding problems." - "They are targeting different skill sets." 

Suprun is Ukrainian. She came to the US in 2019 and, like other Citadel Securities employees, has a history of competing in Olympiads. “I began competing in math competitions when I was in the sixth grade. The success I had in those competitions – and how much I enjoyed them – helped me realize that math was for me and I’ve been pursuing that path ever since.”

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Suprun says she's now living in "two different realities." -  "There's my life here in New York, where I'm doing my job, and my parents' life in Sumy, which is 30km from the Russian border and the location of a recent missile strike – the deadliest attack on Ukrainian civilians since 2023. They frequently hear drones flying overhead and the explosions that too often follow." 

It's a worry, says Suprun. "But they don't want to move, and I’ve come to realize that I don't have control over it. I'm just trying to do my best in my work and my research while supporting them however I can." 

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