Citadel

Citadel is a great place to work for someone without too much experience in the industry. You can make an impact right away and have ownership over your projects. This comes with more responsibilities, and you get to interact with the stakeholders of your work. Having ownership means that you can see your project from initial design through to production. Since the people who use the software that you build are internal clients, you get feedback constantly, resulting in a fast-paced iteration process. You will be learning a lot really quickly and get to develop not only technical skills, but also communication, leadership, and financial skills. Teams are generally pretty small and collaborative. The company has a very flat structure and is results-oriented. As a junior developer, quant, or trader, you have many opportunities to interact with leaders in management across different functions.

Citadel is split among different businesses. As an engineer, you will be supporting traders and researchers who generate money for those businesses. Not all the businesses have the same culture, and thus team experiences could differ. This also means that there will be a team with a business need and culture that you will find compelling.

Some teams' work-life balance isn't too great, and they do work very long hours. Usually, it is because the projects they work on are very time-sensitive and high-margin.

Turnover is relatively high, as some new people may not fit in well with the team and/or business.

Try to keep more of the talent that you spend so much money to recruit for.

Very smart and talented people have left due to internal politics and bad team/business fit.