Updating Results

Athena Capital Research

  • < 100 employees

Athena Capital Research Graduate Programs & Internships

  • Banking & Financial Services

What it does: Investment management and quantitative trading with a focus on algorithmic strategies, finance and technology.

Best known for: Athena Capital Research claims to be a global quantitative investment manager.

Staff stats: Between 10 and 50 employees.

The good bits: Students can apply for internships at the firm anytime as they are always looking for interns, depending on availability of roles. Quantitative researchers and developers, software engineers and systems engineers are some of the entry-level positions.

The not so good bits: There’s limited information about the firm’s salary structure, despite claims of offering competitive base pay. Athena Capital Research also requires an extensive set of skills for aspiring interns such as computer programming languages.

The Athena Capital Research story

Athena Capital Research was founded in 2003 as an investment trading firm in New York. They eventually expanded with an international office in Hong Kong. The firm specialises in algorithmic strategies by integrating finance and technology for automated trading. Their experts have degrees in several fields including artificial intelligence, computer science, economics and physics.

The firm has advocated for open source software participation, which is quite rare in the quantitative finance industry. Athena Capital Research practises a different approach that’s not remotely secretive, as they believe that leveraging open source software can be synergistic for the investment management sector.

The recruitment process

Athena Capital Research provides every candidate with an equal opportunity regardless of their age, colour, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion or any other status protected by law. Applicants can apply online or via corporate email.

Career prospects

The firm has year-round internships for different positions, although the most common roles are quantitative researchers and developers, software engineers and systems engineers. You should be fluent in English and Mandarin if you want to be a system engineer at the firm, as well have a strong background on Linux systems.

Athena Capital Research also requires system engineers to be familiar with Apache, DNS, LDAP, NFS, SMB and SMTP; some scripting languages like BASH, Perl, Python and Ruby; and enterprise storage such as DAS, NAS and SAN. Those who have customer support experience, knowledge of Debian / Ubuntu Linux and hands-on experience with networking (Cisco) will have the advantage over their peers.

Portfolio managers are some of the roles for experienced individuals. They must have a master’s or PhD degree; at least three years in portfolio risk management, managing and developing strategies; at least two years in programming language preferably C++, Java and C#; and at least two years of Unix-based systems experience.

Remuneration

Athena Capital Research says that employees receive a ‘large’ performance-based bonuses on top of competitive base salaries. The firm provides them with up to four weeks of paid time off, complete medical and dental coverage, education and tuition reimbursement, frequent company-sponsored dinners and outings, and free snacks.

The culture

The firm claims to be a small group of intelligent and highly skilled employees. Their work environment veers away from the traditionally formal workplace in the investment management sector: a casual and collegial workplace. Athena Capital Research strikes a healthy work-life balance by having flexible work hours for employees.

The competition

Athena Capital Research competes with GEV Investments (Hong Kong) Ltd, King & Wood Mallesons and Oppenheimer Investments Asia Ltd.

Social contributions

The company actively makes cash or code contributions to the following software development tools and programs: Eclipse Foundation, Luabind, LuaJava, LuaJIT, mongodb, MySQL++, OpenAFS, pion-net, scythe matrix library and Swig. Athena Capital Research also maintains or sponsors ActiveRecord, bitmagic, Electric Sheep and Flam3, Google sparsehash and Threading Building Blocks.

They also donate to a certain percentage of profits with previous beneficiaries including Free Software Foundation (FSF / GNU) and Software In The Public Interest (Debian). Athena Capital Research also donated US$25,000 to NumFocus, a non-profit open-source scientific software group.

Controversy

Athena Capital Research settled a case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for US$1 million in 2014. The SEC accused the firm of market manipulation through complex trading algorithms. The trading firm allegedly manipulated several stocks’ closing prices by inundating the market with many buy or sell orders within the final seconds of the trading day. The SEC described the manipulative action as ‘banging the close’.

The vibe of the place

Graduates need further education such as a master’s or PhD degree if they want to advance in their careers at Athena Capital Research. The company’s frequent need for interns will benefit those who can’t seem to find a good schedule for work and studies. You must demonstrate a broad range of skills, particularly for computer programming and software, to have a clear advantage over other candidates.

You’ll also like the company if you prefer an informal work environment with frequent collaboration with other people, which is very likely at Athena Capital Research given the firm’s small size.

Jobs & Opportunities

Locations With Jobs & Opportunities
  • Hong Kong
Hiring candidates with qualifications in
B
Business & Management
C
Creative Arts
E
Engineering & Mathematics
I
IT & Computer Science
S
Sciences