IMC Trading Career Growth & Development

What new skill or role did you want to learn? Why was this important to you?
I was eager to grow into a more authentic and inspiring leader — someone who could align others around a shared vision and lead with both clarity and empathy. My 360 feedback surfaced a few key growth areas: being more vulnerable with my team, inviting feedback on how my actions impacted them and clearly articulating my leadership style. I also saw the need to speak with genuine conviction about the goals we were pursuing and the purpose behind our work. As I took on more responsibility, these capabilities became essential — not just to lead execution but to create belief, momentum and shared ownership. This shift directly contributed to stronger team performance and long-term results for the desk.

How did your employer help support this time of learning and professional development?
LEAP gave me both the structure and the support to develop in ways that felt deeply personal and practical. This program (developed by IMC) helped me connect the dots between mindset, behavior and impact — encouraging me to bring my full self to the table earlier in the process, share my thinking openly and not shy away from imperfect ideas. It also gave me space to practice the kind of leadership that celebrates and uplifts others. I learned how to use storytelling, praise and encouragement to build confidence and clarity. More broadly, IMC’s culture of feedback and emphasis on ownership was instrumental to my growth. Throughout my career, I have felt consistently supported by mentors, peers and team members who wanted me to succeed and were willing to challenge me to get there.

What was the outcome of this experience? How did it impact your future growth in your profession?
It’s had a profound impact on how I lead, how my team performs and ultimately, where my career has gone. I now make it a point to lead with greater transparency, openness and care — to connect our day-to-day work to a larger purpose and to recognize the people driving that progress. That shift built deeper trust and alignment within the team, which played a critical role in the success of a major strategic shift we undertook. A year and a half after setting a new vision for our trading strategy and seeing it through, I was promoted — an important milestone but also just one part of the larger impact. With it came increased resourcing for our team, enabling us to scale our impact and build stronger capabilities. I’ve also taken on responsibility for a larger team and have been brought into key strategic decision-making forums. It’s been a moment of personal and professional growth, and it’s expanded what I now see possible for myself and the team I lead.

How does your team cultivate a culture of learning, whether that’s through hackathons, lunch and learns, access to online courses or other resources?

At IMC, learning is everywhere: firm-wide, within teams and for every individual. New engineers start with a five-week global traineeship. It’s a mix of hands-on work with our codebase and lectures to build foundational knowledge, taught by some of our best engineers because we believe our people are our greatest asset.

Learning doesn’t stop there. As you grow, you see the value of open knowledge-sharing. Developers attend sessions on trading fundamentals, join monthly team updates and ask questions freely. Our “If you hear about it, you can ask about it” culture means even experienced engineers learn something new daily.

On my team, we run biweekly knowledge shares with developers and traders, and recently organized Chicago’s first hackathon, an afternoon for engineers and interns to step away from day-to-day work, explore new ideas and try new tools. The best part, however, is that developers don’t have to wait for a hackathon to try new things. When you see growth opportunities, you’re encouraged to pursue them, whether that’s adopting a new library or asking someone about their work. Mentorship is abundant, too; I practice prioritization with my manager and learn new workflows by shadowing senior developers. 

How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?

A culture of learning helps to reduce wasted efforts. Much duplication goes unnoticed when working in an organization. I once saw a coworker demo an order book simulation, which later turned out to be the key piece in debugging our strategy that saved me days of work. In another case, a one-hour workflow walkthrough shaved my five-minute daily process down to a single command that runs in seconds.

Access to more information also helps increase each person’s scope of work and ownership. You can see the investment pay off when a trader and a developer work together. With each side having context for the other, they can easily translate trading objectives into technical objectives. This means developers can make key decisions on their own, picking solutions that balance speed and quality without waiting on constant input from trading.

What advice would you give to other engineers or engineering leaders interested in creating a culture of learning on their own team?

Building a culture of learning is a long-term investment, and there’s no magic formula. However, I’ve noticed common traits among teams that succeed. First, let people drive their own learning. Help create the stage for learning, like lightning talks, mentorships and training, but let the topic come from the team’s interests. People remember the things that they want to learn about. Second, let the best idea win, a core value at IMC. No matter who the idea comes from, let the idea speak for itself. It will help motivate your team to learn and improve themselves.

Finally, normalize being wrong and growing from it. Encourage questions and admit your own knowledge gaps. When leaders own up to what they don’t know, others feel safe to speak up, too.