Women With HRT Tech Summit

Hudson River Trading’s First Tech Summit
Friday, May 21 – Saturday, May 22, 2021

HRT is proud to host a virtual two-day summit for women and nonbinary undergraduate students in May 2021 to showcase the types of challenges we work on. We will bring together an inspiring group of HRTers who will share their experiences as women in tech, or allies at HRT, and provide valuable resources and advice for women rising in the field. Join us for talks and workshops hosted by HRT Algo Developers, Core Developers, Recruiters, and more.

Jenna MacCarley
Core Developer

Elisabeth Markham
Algo Developer

Dani Ortiz
Lead Recruiter

Jessie Newman
Algo Engineer

Sabina Smajlaj
Ops Developer

Iain Dunning
Algo Developer

Madhuri Popuri
Business Development

Eli Crumrine
Algo Developer

Talks & Panels
All registrants are welcome to attend all virtual talks and panels. Schedule to follow.

Workshops
There will be several hands-on engineering and data analysis workshops. Indicate your interest in participation during registration!

Networking
Get to know HRTers and summit participants over virtual social events and networking opportunities.
I don’t identify as a woman, may I register?
Yes! While this is a women’s summit, people of all gender identities are welcome.
What background knowledge is required to register?
We have no strict background requirement, and encourage folks with an interested in technology and quantitative trading to register. No previous experience in finance is required.
Is it OK if I cannot attend both days?
Yes! You may attend as few or as many sessions as you like.
Friday 5/21
Saturday 5/22
10:00 AM
Welcome!
Women with HRT Panel: Learn from a cross-section of women at HRT about their personal journeys, careers, and lives at HRT.
10:00 AM
Inspiring the Next Generation of Female Engineers
Join us for an incredible session with Debbie Sterling, an engineer and founder of GoldieBlox, a media and toy company out to inspire the next generation of female engineers. Debbie will share her journey of succeeding in a male-dominated world, take us through the lessons she’s learned in promoting diversity in STEM, and talk to us about the unique power of mentorship. You’ll surely be inspired to take on the world!
11:00 AM
Tech Talks
Automated Trading 101: An automated trading system makes investment decisions, sends instructions to exchanges, and has profit (or loss) at the end of the day, all without human intervention. In this talk, you’ll learn how a computer could make investment decisions – and pick up some useful industry jargon along the way.
Data in Trading: How can real world data enable HRT to make better trading decisions? In this talk you will learn how firms like HRT use data to make informed financial trades and the engineering challenges involved.
11:00 AM
Tech Talks
Writing Effective Unit Tests: Learn how effective testing keeps your code resilient, makes it easier to safely onboard new team members, and serves as documentation.
Research Best Practices: Explore best practices and common pitfalls frequently encountered in research.
12:00 PM
Tech Talks
Arbitrage 101: Learn the basics of arbitrage as well as some relevant trading background.
HRT Software Engineering Leads Panel: Hear from the leaders of our Core Development team about the challenges they face building our advanced trading platform, and what it’s like to be on the team.
12:00 PM
Tech Talks
Asynchronous Programming: Learn the history of asynchronous programming, how to apply it, and how the Python language supports it.
Quantitative Research Case Studies: Get a high level overview of alpha research followed by a deep dive into several real-world prediction problems.
1:00 PM
Networking
1:30 PM
Workshops (by invitation)
Pandas for Stock Prediction: Explore the relationship between economic announcements and price movements using open source tools and data sets.
Book Builder Optimizations: Learn how to write an optimized order book implementation.
1:00 PM
Networking
2:00 PM
Recruiting Talk + Q&A
Landing the Job: HRT recruiters will walk you through their tips on how to land the job, from resume building all the way to getting an offer. This talk will be followed by a Q&A with HRT Core Developers and Algo Developers.
3:30 PM
Tech Talks
AI in Trading: Learn how AI can be applied to problems in trading, and challenges that may arise when doing so. No background in AI or trading is required.
Gotta Go Fast – Trading Quickly and Safely with FPGAs: When the rate of real-time data reached the boundary of software processing, HRT called for hardware as a solution. Learn why this is important, and how we use FPGAs to trade quickly, safely, and smartly.
2:30 PM
Networking
4:30 PM
Tech Talk
Finance Industry 101: Learn about Market Structure with a focus on US Equities from industry veteran Erica Attonito.
5:30 PM
Networking

Campus Recruiting
Visit our campus recruiting page for our recruiting schedule, information on internships, and tips on interviewing at HRT!
Careers
We’re always on the lookout for the best and brightest. Think you might be an awesome candidate? Join our team!