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interns at lincoln park zoo
Our summer 2014 interns (L to R): Ian Torres, Purav Shah,
Stephen Herring, Everett Hu, John Lefkovitz, Joshua Alley.
We recently concluded our first official summer internship program. While we’ve had students interning with us in the past, we wanted to make this summer a more formal (and fun!) experience.

Our internship program goals are similar to the TT University Program, which provides free access to our trading platforms, APIs and expertise to more than 50 universities around the world. The main goal of the University Program is to educate and mentor the next generation of financial leaders by donating our expertise and technology to universities worldwide. Whether the students are studying finance, computer science, engineering and/or economics, we want them to understand how to use trading software in a safe, efficient way.

The goal of the paid internship program is to provide top students on summer break the opportunity to contribute enhancements that make our software even better, which in the process helps them become more advanced programmers and developers, and to enhance their understanding of the financial markets.

We received internship applications from students across the country, and selected six interns to join us at TT’s Chicago office this summer. Here’s a brief overview of our interns and how they contributed:

Joshua Alley, Georgia Institute of Technology, Computer Science. Split his time with the analytics and client applications teams.

Stephen Herring, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Computer Science. Worked with the mobile development team and focused efforts on TT’s next-generation platform.

Everett Hu, University of Illinois-Urbana, Computer Engineering. Worked with the systems infrastructure team.

John Lefkovitz, Lake Forest College, Economics. Worked with the HR team.

Purav Shah, Northwestern University, Computer Science. Split his time with the analytics and client applications teams.

Ian Torres, Stanford University, Computer Science.  Worked with the analytics team.

interns at frontera grill
Team lunches, like this one at Frontera Grill, enabled our
interns to experience some of Chicago’s famed cuisine.

Over the course of the internship, the six interns met our program goals of gaining hands-on experience and mentorship in the financial industry.

“There was never a moment when we felt left out; we were always kept busy. From problem solving to implementing features in the trading platform to designing algorithms with ADL® (Algo Design Lab) and making a tool from scratch, we were assigned all kinds of tasks,” said Purav Shah. “It was fun being so close to the action and seeing how robust software performs in a live market when responding to incredible amounts of data.”

interns at the second city
Our Chicago office, including five of our interns, attended a private
performance at The Second City to celebrate TT’s 20th anniversary.

 

In addition to the work aspect, TT colleagues made sure the interns experienced Chicago while they were here. Summer outings to the Lincoln Park Zoo, Second City, Frontera Grill and regular lunches in the Loop as well as company-wide outings in the new game room space helped show the interns how TT colleagues balance hard work with fun.“It has definitely been a great summer internship at TT,” said Shah. “In addition to feeling like we were part of the TT family, it was worthwhile getting a taste of what my future could be like after I graduate.”

On behalf of everyone at TT, a huge thank you to each of the interns for spending their summer with us. We really enjoyed having you and are so glad you enjoyed the experience.

If you are a student interested in interning with TT next summer, please send us an email for more details on the application process and deadlines. We will be accepting resumes and cover letters for our 2015 summer internship program through December 31, 2014. Our internship program aims to pair curious, out-of-the-box students with our team of professional engineers. Be part of developing what is next in the bleeding edge of trading application development.