SMARTER MODELS. STRONGER SIGNALS. BETTER TRADES.
IMC is a global trading firm powered by cutting-edge research and world-class technology. Since 1989, we've built algorithms and systems that trade on markets worldwide using our own capital and technology – and today, ML is at the core of how we do it.
We embed ML across our entire research and trading workflow, forecasting market behaviour, expanding feature sets, and deploying models across our tech stack.
We're looking for researchers with experience in RL, DNNs, LLMs, NLP, optimisation, or AI systems. No finance background needed. You bring the research depth, we'll teach you the markets.
HOW ML IS APPLIED AT IMC
- Predictive modelling
We use ML to forecast market behaviour and identify trading opportunities, training models on huge noisy, real-world datasets across multiple asset classes.
- High-speed experimentation
Our infrastructure lets you test and iterate ideas quickly, at scale, with real-time feedback from live markets. See your model’s impact within minutes or hours.
- Agentic AI in production
Our engineering, trading, and research teams are embedding agents into production-critical workflows across our tech stack – with the compute power to match.
- Cross-team research
Our global teams collaborate to push the boundaries of what AI can achieve, with the autonomy and ownership to tackle problems that have a real impact.
CONFERENCES
We're proud to sponsor the conferences where the ML research community comes together. Our teams attend and recruit at ICML, NeurIPS, and ICLR each year.
START YOUR JOURNEY WITH IMC
PHD FELLOWSHIP
The IMC PhD Fellowship supports exceptional doctoral researchers in STEM fields including computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, and engineering. We're looking for researchers who are genuinely curious, technically rigorous, and excited by problems without easy answers. If you have two or fewer years remaining in your PhD and want to see where your research could take you, the IMC Fellowship could be your next step.
The Fellow receives $50,000 in academic support, an IMC internship seat, a dedicated mentor, and a travel stipend to attend ICML or NeurIPS. Four Finalists each receive $5,000 in academic support and expedited access to IMC's internship program, with the first runner-up also receiving an internship seat.
Shortlisted candidates are invited to our Chicago office for the IMC Researcher Connect event, where you'll present your research to our quant team, meet researchers and traders, and get a real sense of what we're working on.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
We're a global trading firm powered by a cutting-edge research environment and a world-class technology backbone. Our teams build algorithms and systems that trade on markets around the world using our own capital and technology.
We embed ML across our entire research and trading workflow, from forecasting market behaviour and expanding feature sets, to embedding agents across our systems. Experience in RL, DNNs, LLMs, NLP, optimisation, or AI systems translates directly to the problems we're solving.
Your research won't wait for approvals or product roadmaps. You're working with large-scale, real-world data, with tight feedback loops and the autonomy to push ideas into production quickly. The problems are hard, the pace is fast, and you'll see the results of your work directly.
Collaboration is a huge part of how we work. Engineers, traders, and researchers sit side by side, constantly testing new ideas. It's fast-paced but team-focused, you're not siloed, and your work has visibility across the organisation.
Energetic, collaborative, and very hands-on. People are given real ownership early on and your work has visible impact. We love experimentation and continuous improvement, and everyone's ideas can directly influence how we trade and build technology.
Not at all. Many of our researchers join from fields completely outside finance. We'll teach you what you need to know about markets.
ML Researchers focus on building and refining models that improve predictive power. Quant Researchers focus on understanding markets and developing trading strategies. There's a lot of overlap in skills, and both roles contribute to how we trade, together they create a strong research environment.