Quantitative Trading Analyst

Pretty typical for a prop trading interview.

I applied online, and was promptly sent the math and coding challenges (since I applied for engineering as well as trading). I think I did much better on the math ones, since I only heard back from the trading side.

Next came a virtual interview. They asked questions like "Why DRW? If you had $1M, what would you do with it? etc." Obviously this was more of a culture fit type questioning in lieu of the recruiters calling.

About a day later I was called by a trader from DRW's New York office. We had a pretty good conversation, and the math / algorithmic questions were quite straightforward (don't want to say them here, but they are some of the more widely available ones). Honestly this first interview was easy, all things considered. I spent about 15 mins on the math questions, 10 mins on my resume, and like 30 mins asking questions.

That phone interview was ~4pm EST. By about 10am the next morning I was informed that I was invited to a superday the next week, so you can tell how fast this process was.

The superdays were quite fun. The candidates for the quant trading analyst (1st year), the "regular" trading analyst (there really shouldn't be a distinction, but whatever), and the interns all interviewed together. I was flown into Chicago at 6am, and promptly went to my hotel room, which was really nice. I slept until the first event, when I went down to the office.

The only real difference between the "regular" trading interview and the "quant" trading interview is that the quant traders had a (short) coding challenge and the others had a mock trading session. All the quant traders went into a training room to take a (pretty easy) coding challenge. It was basic test of competence in Python. We then were bused to dinner and then back to the hotel.

The next morning, we arrived at our scheduled time to interview. We were given breakfast and lunch (catered). I was scheduled to have 3 interviews that day, and I ended up having 5. There was a bit of uncertainty about my schedule, but there was plenty to do during the downtime. Some of the candidates were playing ping-pong, pool, and golden tee while waiting. I also think there was a cash game of poker going on (typical traders).

The interviews ranged from typical (brainteasers, math questions, market making) to technical (code review, whiteboarding code, computer systems), probably since I was a CS major too. I think I performed best when I wasn't overthinking any of the problems and when I was laying out the most straightforward solution. If I seemed to be making progress, the interviewers would be fine with providing a guiding hand to push me in the direction of the right answer.

The on-site was probably the reason I ended up choosing DRW. I really enjoyed the people I talked to, much more so than in tech or at many of the other trading places I've interviewed.