Hardware Machine Learning PhD Research Internship IMC Trading · · $225,000 base salary Chicago, United States 8 hours ago

We are deploying machine learning directly onto custom hardware – and we want you to help drive it forward. This PhD internship is an opportunity to work on research that has direct impact on IMC's work tackling open problems at the frontier of low‑latency ML inference and hardware acceleration.

You’ll work alongside IMC engineers in one of the most demanding low‑latency computing environments in the world. You’ll own a focused research project from start to finish, present your findings to the team, and leave behind a prototype or benchmark that we can build on.

Your Core Responsibilities

• Architect and develop an ML-focused research project based on real‑world use cases.
• Work hands‑on with hardware engineers to implement, verify, and deploy ML inference solutions.
• Track and evaluate emerging research in neural architecture search, machine learning systems, and quantization methods, and determine what translates to measurable improvements in our systems.
• Present your project to the team, deepening our collective understanding of an area of ML acceleration.
• Gain hardware design fundamentals from skilled RTL developers and learn how they apply to our industry.
• Build skills to evaluate research not only from an academic perspective, but through real‑world performance constraints, engineering costs, and industry impact.

Your Skills and Experience

• Currently enrolled in a PhD program in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or a related field.
• Solid understanding of hardware constraints and design trade‑offs, such as pipelining, resource utilization, and fixed‑point arithmetic, that shape how ML models can be efficiently mapped onto FPGAs or custom ASICs.
• Experience with hardware fundamentals, whether through VHDL/SystemVerilog development, HLS tools, or ML‑to‑hardware frameworks such as hls4ml, FINN, or Vitis AI.
• Understanding of machine learning fundamentals, including neural network architectures, inference optimization, quantization techniques, and ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Proficiency in Python or similar languages for tooling, testing, and simulation.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work collaboratively across disciplines with both technical and non‑technical teams.

You may submit one application per role each year. We strongly encourage you to focus on applying to a single role that best matches your skills and interests. Though you may apply to multiple roles, each application will be evaluated based on the specific criteria established for that role. If you have already applied for this position during the current recruitment season and were not selected, you may reapply when the next recruitment season begins in 2027.

The base salary is one component of total compensation. Full‑time, permanent positions are eligible for a discretionary bonus and benefits, including paid leave and insurance.

Base Salary: $225,000

About Us

IMC is a research‑driven trading firm where quantitative modeling, machine learning, and engineering shape how modern markets are traded. A stabilizing force in markets since 1989, we provide liquidity across trading venues, delivering the best outcome in value and risk management to investors. Using our own technology and capital, we build proprietary systems and algorithms that operate across global markets. Our researchers, traders, and engineers work as a collective, combining rapid experimentation, advanced infrastructure, and real‑time feedback to turn insight into execution and execution into advantage.