AI Engineer

CTC Lateral - Website & LinkedIn; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 175,000 - 225,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous time off

Insurance coverage

Free breakfast and lunch

Wellness reimbursement

Parental leave

Diversity & inclusion

Job summary

Chicago Trading Company (CTC) is a premier proprietary trading firm specializing in options market making, with a focus on innovative AI tools, models, and agent ecosystems. The role builds tooling used by engineers, quants, and traders, and advances systems for inference, configuration, and access control.

You will work on interfaces for specific workflows, improve reliability, and prototype new agent uses across research and trading, collaborating closely with end users to shape the product

Qualifications

• Experience building software with LLMs and agents, including tools, context, orchestration, and model APIs.
• Familiarity with coding agents and the tradeoffs between models, providers, and harnesses.
• Comfortable working in Python, C++, and/or Java.
• Experience building software used by other engineers or end users.
• Comfortable working across application code, developer tooling, infrastructure, and user-facing software.
• Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous problems from idea through production.
• Hands-on use of this technology outside of work, including personal projects.

Responsibilities

• Build agent tooling used by CTC’s engineers, quants, and traders.
• Bring new models, coding agents, and agent harnesses into CTC as the ecosystem evolves.
• Build the common infrastructure needed to support them, including inference, configuration, integrations, tracing, and access controls.
• Build AI tools and interfaces for specific roles and workflows across the firm.
• Improve the performance and reliability of the systems we run, from shared services to model inference.
• Prototype new uses for agents in areas like research, simulation, and trading.
• Work directly with users to understand their workflows and guide what we build next.

Skills

LLM tooling

Agent development

Cross-functional collaboration

Python

C++

Java

End-user tooling

Ambiguity handling

Personal projects

Tools

API integrations

Model APIs

Inference optimization

Job description

Chicago Trading Company (CTC) is a premier proprietary trading firm specializing in options market making. Our collaborative culture fuels innovation in quantitative research, systematic trading strategies, and cutting-edge trading technology. For over three decades CTC has provided critical liquidity across derivatives exchanges worldwide - making them fairer, more transparent, and more efficient.

We strive to be the most innovative firm in the industry today, tomorrow, and long into the future while upholding ethical excellence. We believe that CTC makes a positive impact on the markets, the lives of our employees, and all the communities to which we belong. Started in 1995 by a team of forward-thinking Traders, we are proud to call ourselves an industry leader that keeps making markets and each other better.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Build agent tooling used by CTC’s engineers, quants, and traders.
• Bring new models, coding agents, and agent harnesses into CTC as the ecosystem evolves.
• Build the common infrastructure needed to support them, including inference, configuration, integrations, tracing, and access controls.
• Build AI tools and interfaces for specific roles and workflows across the firm.
• Improve the performance and reliability of the systems we run, from shared services to model inference.
• Prototype new uses for agents in areas like research, simulation, and trading.
• Work directly with users to understand their workflows and guide what we build next.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

• Experience building software with LLMs and agents, including tools, context, orchestration, and model APIs.
• Familiarity with coding agents and the tradeoffs between different models, providers, and harnesses.
• Comfortable working in Python, C++, and/or Java.
• Experience building software used by other engineers or end users.
• Comfortable working across application code, developer tooling, infrastructure, and user-facing software.
• Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous problems from idea through production.
• Hands-on use of this technology outside of work, including projects or experiments you’ve built for yourself.

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience with model evaluation or benchmarking.
• Experience with inference optimization, fine-tuning, or post-training.
• Experience in financial markets or trading environments.
• Experience with quantitative research, market data, simulation, or backtesting.

Compensation

The salary range for this role is listed below. This role is also eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. The discretionary bonus will be dependent upon the individual’s skills, experience, qualifications, and firm performance.

Salary Range

$175,000—$225,000 USD

Most teams at CTC, with the exception of Trading, follow a hybrid workplace model, subject to change based on business need.

Our Benefits

We strongly believe in the well-being of our employees and their families so we offer outstanding benefits to support you both professionally and personally. These benefits include generous time off, insurance coverage, paid parental leave, free breakfast and lunch (plus healthy snacks, of course), wellness reimbursement, and a variety of other benefits focused on providing the best employee experience.

(Disclaimer: interns and contractors are not eligible for benefits at CTC)

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

At CTC, we aim to cultivate a workplace that celebrates diversity and each person feels included, engaged and empowered. Where each of us feels we belong. We are committed to having a diverse workforce and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. CTC does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.

If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or to apply for a position, please contact us at [e-mail]. Note that emails sent to this email account for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Information submitted by job applicants may be subject to review and analysis by automated systems, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), as part of the recruitment process. Such systems are utilized to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of our hiring procedures. Applicants are advised that any information provided may be evaluated by AI tools to ensure an equitable and thorough assessment.