Machine Learning Engineer (MLE) Intern

Our formula for success is to hire exceptional people, encourage their ideas and reward their results.

We are seeking a motivated Machine Learning Engineer (MLE) Intern to join our team and play a crucial role in developing cutting-edge NLP solutions for finance and trading applications. This internship provides an exceptional opportunity to gain hands-on experience with large language models (LLMs), machine learning model development, and the fundamentals of machine learning operations (MLOps) while actively contributing to the growth of our software engineering environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Model Development & Refinement: Design, implement, and refine NLP models for financial applications, leveraging LLM capabilities and collaborating to improve software engineering practices.
• Prompt Engineering: Develop and optimize prompts for more effective interaction with LLMs, tailored to finance-specific tasks, in alignment with evolving SWE methodologies.
• Data Engineering: Participate in building data pipelines for model training and evaluation, including data collection, cleaning, preprocessing, and labeling, while contributing to better data management.
• Model Testing & Evaluation: Design and implement rigorous testing frameworks to assess NLP model performance and identify areas for improvement.
• Python Development: Write efficient Python scripts for data manipulation, model training, and model deployment, with a focus on code quality and maintainability.
• SWE Collaboration: Work closely with the team to establish and refine software engineering practices, promoting code reviews, testing, and documentation.
• Research & Learning: Stay updated on the latest NLP and MLOps techniques, share insights and actively bring improvements to development processes

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• A degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field graduating between December 2024 and June 2025 (Bachelor’s, Master’s)
• Strong foundation in machine learning concepts (supervised/unsupervised learning, classification, regression).
• Solid understanding of NLP fundamentals and experience with LLMs a plus.
• Proficiency in Python programming and familiarity with libraries like NumPy, Pandas, and Scikit-learn.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Passion for developing innovative AI solutions within the financial domain.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience with NLP tasks (text classification, summarization, question-answering).
• Knowledge of TensorFlow or PyTorch.
• Basic understanding of MLOps principles (monitoring, versioning, model serving).

Learning Opportunities:

• Gain in-depth experience with cutting-edge NLP techniques, effective LLM utilization, and model deployment in a real-world setting.
• Develop robust MLE skills, from data engineering to model evaluation, while directly influencing the growth of the SWE environment.
• Contribute to projects with direct impact on financial decision-making.
• Be a part of building a strong software engineering culture, driving improvements in code quality, collaboration, and efficiency.

What to expect during the internship…

• Meaningful projects: You’ll receive a challenging project to complete during your time here. Each project, advised by a software engineer, promotes a comprehensive learning experience and provides you with meaningful work experience.
• Community: Throughout the summer, we host a variety of educational, social and team-building activities to foster friendship and camaraderie.
• Housing: DRW provides fully furnished apartments located close to the office –making your morning commute as easy as possible.
• Mentorship: You’ll build a professional relationship with an experienced mentor in your field. Mentors and mentees meet to discuss goals, challenges and professional development and explore the city together at our mentor outings.
• Education: As technology continues to drive the trading industry forward, both in terms of new products and transaction methods, the future will present us with unique opportunities and challenges. To prepare you for how technology will continue to impact trading’s future landscape, you will complete an options course framed from a developer’s standpoint to help you visualize how your technology solutions will be used in real time. As the trading industry continually evolves, both in terms of new products and transaction methods, the future will present us with unique opportunities and challenges.

DRW is a diversified trading firm with over 3 decades of experience bringing sophisticated technology and exceptional people together to operate in markets around the world.  We value autonomy and the ability to quickly pivot to capture opportunities, so we operate using our own capital and trading at our own risk. 

Headquartered in Chicago with offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, we trade a variety of asset classes including Fixed Income, ETFs, Equities, FX, Commodities and Energy across all major global markets. We have also leveraged our expertise and technology to expand into three non-traditional strategies: real estate, venture capital and cryptoassets. 

We operate with respect, curiosity and open minds. The people who thrive here share our belief that it’s not just what we do that matters–it's how we do it.  DRW is a place of high expectations, integrity, innovation and a willingness to challenge consensus.  

For more information about DRW's processing activities and our use of job applicants' data, please view our Privacy Notice at https://drw.com/privacy-notice.

California residents, please review the California Privacy Notice for information about certain legal rights at https://drw.com/california-privacy-notice.

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