IMC Trading Innovation, Technology & Agility

What project are you most excited to work on in 2025, and what is particularly compelling about this work for you?

The project I am most excited about in 2025 is expanding our research capabilities within IMC on a global scale. This initiative will build a cutting-edge infrastructure to empower research teams to experiment freely, iterate rapidly and run workloads with confidence. By pushing the boundaries of technology, we aim to develop predictive models to solidify our competitive edge.

What excites me most is how this project challenges me to grow. Coming from a developer background, I’m eager to explore the complexities of data center infrastructure and enhance my business skills by working with vendors, navigating contracts and contributing to cost estimations — areas where I have limited experience. Additionally, I’m excited about collaborating with new colleagues. This project is a unique opportunity to contribute to transformative work while advancing my expertise and strengthening IMC’s future globally.

What does the roadmap for this project look like? Who will you collaborate with, and what challenges will you need to overcome in the process?

This project’s roadmap focuses on collaboration across teams to meet researchers’ immediate needs while anticipating future demands. Our goal is to ensure infrastructure never limits analysis, allowing researchers to focus on innovation. 

Key milestones include expanding our current compute resources to support both existing use cases and new initiatives, collaborating with stakeholders to create a flexible research strategy that adapts to shifting priorities, developing a cost model to better understand usage patterns, and exploring emerging technologies to boost productivity across both hardware and software. We also aim to simplify how researchers interact with the infrastructure, ensuring seamless access to key features that enhance performance. Additionally, establishing a robust global operational support model will ensure reliability and scalability as the system evolves.

Challenges like tech limitations, coordination and costs are inevitable, but we are well-positioned to overcome them. By fostering continuous learning, onboarding skilled talent, making data-driven decisions and maintaining open communication, we can build an infrastructure that drives global innovation.

What in your past projects, education or work history best prepares you to tackle this project? What do you hope to learn from this work to apply in the future?

At IMC, I’ve had the privilege of working with talented colleagues on both technical and non-technical challenges. My time on the data engineering team built a strong foundation in managing data at scale and supporting analysis tools that turn raw data into insights. More recently, working with research teams deepened my understanding of their workflows. I’ve gained hands-on experience with machine learning models and pipelines, tackling bottlenecks and improving runtimes to enhance overall workflow efficiencies. 

These experiences have strengthened my technical expertise and problem-solving skills while teaching me to leverage others’ knowledge. They’ve prepared me to tackle the complexities of expanding research infrastructure and shape my career. While I’ve gained insights into data center infrastructure, research use cases and project management, this project offers an exciting chance to make a broader impact. A key area I want to grow in is strategic thinking — evaluating challenges from a high-level perspective and driving meaningful change. I also hope to share knowledge, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous growth within the organization.