IMC Financial Markets Interview Questions

92 total interview insight submissions
Interview Experience (85%)

The Interview Experience is a score from 1 star (very negative) to 5 stars (very positive) generated based on the Interview Insights at this company.

The number you see in the middle of the doughnut pie chart is the simple average of these scores. If you hover over the various sections of the donut, you will see the % breakdown of each score given.

The percentile score in the title is calculated across the entire Company Database and uses an adjusted score based on Bayesian Estimates (to account for companies that have few interview insights). Simply put, as a company gets more reviews, the confidence of a "true score" increases so it is pulled closer to its simple average and away from the average of the entire dataset.

3.6
  • Very Negative
  • Negative
  • Neutral
  • Positive
  • Very Positive
Interview Difficulty (100%)

The Interview Difficulty is a score ranging from very difficult (red) to very easy (green) generated based on the Interview Insights at this company.

The number you see in the middle of the doughnut pie chart is the simple average of these scores. The higher the number, the more difficult the interviews on average. If you hover over the various sections of the doughnut, you will see the % breakdown of each score given.

The percentile score in the title is calculated across the entire Company Database and uses an adjusted score based on Bayesian Estimates (to account for companies that have few interview insights). Simply put, as a company gets more insights, the confidence of a "true score" increases so it is pulled closer to its simple average and away from the average of the entire data set.

3.6
  • Very Easy
  • Easy
  • Average
  • Difficult
  • Very Difficult
% Interns - FT Offers (75%)

The % of Interns Getting a Full Time Offer chart is meant to provide a realistic estimate of the hiring practices of the company based on the reviews at this company.

The number you see in the middle of the doughnut pie chart is the simple average of these scores. If you hover over the various sections of the doughnut, you will see the % breakdown of each score given.

The percentile score in the title is calculated across the entire Company Database and uses an adjusted score based on Bayesian Estimates (to account for companies that have few reviews). Simply put, as a company gets more reviews, the confidence of a "true score" increases so it is pulled closer to the simple company average and away from the average of the entire data set.

58%
  • 0%
  • 10%
  • 20%
  • 30%
  • 40%
  • 50%
  • 60%
  • 70%
  • 80%
  • 90%
  • 100%

Interviews at IMC Financial Markets

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Filter by:
Year
Job Title
Group/Division
Location
Experience
Difficulty
1st Year Analyst
Year 2021
Job Title 1st Year Analyst
Group/Division Other
Location Amsterdam
Experience
Positive
Difficulty
Difficult
Trader
Year 2021
Job Title Trader
Group/Division Prop Trading
Location Chicago
Experience
Positive
Difficulty
Difficult
Intern
Year 2021
Job Title Intern
Group/Division Capital Markets
Location Chicago
Experience
Neutral
Difficulty
Very Difficult
Intern
Year 2021
Job Title Intern
Group/Division Trading
Location Chicago
Experience
Very Negative
Difficulty
Average
Student / Prospective Monkey
Year 2021
Job Title Student / Prospective Monkey
Group/Division Trading
Location Sydney
Experience
Positive
Difficulty
Average
Junior Trader
Year 2021
Job Title Junior Trader
Group/Division Prop Trading
Location Amsterdam
Experience
Positive
Difficulty
Difficult
Junior Trader
Year 2021
Job Title Junior Trader
Group/Division Trading
Location Amsterdam
Experience
Neutral
Difficulty
Difficult
Intern
Year 2020
Job Title Intern
Group/Division N/A
Location Chicago
Experience
Neutral
Difficulty
Average
N/A
Year 2021
Job Title N/A
Group/Division Prop Trading
Location Amsterdam
Experience
Positive
Difficulty
Difficult
Intern
Year 2021
Job Title Intern
Group/Division Trading
Location
Experience
Very Positive
Difficulty
Easy

Interview Questions & Answers - IMC Financial Markets Examples

Flpoor trader Interview - Prop Trading

Anonymous interview candidate in chicago
Interviewed: March 2026
Date Submitted: Mar 24, 2026
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Applied Online
Length of Process
2-3 months
Application
Phone Interview
1 on 1 Interview
IQ / Intelligence Test
Background Check
Interview
Online assessment. Then behavioral with hr. Then a technical interview with one of the traders. Then an in-person super at the office.
Interview Questions
The trading simulation game. Very high intensity hard to prepare.
Sample Answer

Summer intern Trading Interview - Trading

Anonymous interview candidate in Amsterdam
Interviewed: September 2025
Date Submitted: Feb 16, 2026
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Applied Online
Length of Process
Less than 1 month
Application
1 on 1 Interview
Skills Test
IQ / Intelligence Test
Personality Test
Interview
First I had to do a games-based assesment. After that, I had a sort of "hirevue" with technical and behavioural questions. And then an interview with a recruiter, behavioral but also technical which I wasn't expecting.
Interview Questions
To be honest, the quetsions were quite easy with probability questions (rolling a dice, expected value...° But like I said before I didn't expect to have technical questions.
Sample Answer

Graduate Trader Interview

Anonymous interview candidate in Amsterdam
Interviewed: November 2025
Date Submitted: Dec 30, 2025
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Applied Online
Length of Process
1-2 months
Application
Phone Interview
1 on 1 Interview
Skills Test
Personality Test
Interview
Neurolympics assessment, HireVue with maths question, online interview with HR, Final Round Assessment Day
Interview Questions
The most difficult question I'd received was as follows: Alex and Blake flip coins until they obtain their first heads. Given Alex took fewer flips, compute his expected number of flips.
Sample Answer

Quantitative Trader Interview - Quantitative Trading

Anonymous interview candidate in Amsterdam
Interviewed: October 2025
Date Submitted: Dec 21, 2025
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Applied Online
Length of Process
2-3 months
Application
Phone Interview
Skills Test
IQ / Intelligence Test
Interview
Started with a brain test (testing reaction speed, concentration etc). Once you passed, it moved to the HV stage. Three questions, 2 behavioural/motivation and 1 technical. Then it moved to the technical interview stage which was an online interview with a member on the recruitement team. It inolved basic probability and a mini trading game.
Interview Questions
In the trading game, I wasn't expecting them to work through two different scenarios and ask you to explain your thinking for both of them
Sample Answer

Quant Trader Interview - Quantitative Trading

Anonymous interview candidate in Amsterdam
Interviewed: February 2024
Date Submitted: Nov 23, 2025
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Applied Online
Length of Process
2-3 months
Application
Phone Interview
1 on 1 Interview
Skills Test
Interview
First round play Neurolympics (google it online it's very simple). Then do a hirevue which involves a maths question and from experience it only matters that you get the maths question right. This is followed by two more HR/technical interviews with fairly straightforward maths questions.
Interview Questions
1 question about how many expected pairs of spaghetti can you expect if you tie ends of 100 spaghettis together.
Sample Answer

Software Engineer Interview - Risk

Anonymous interview candidate in Amsterdam
Interviewed: October 2025
Date Submitted: Nov 19, 2025
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Recruiter
Length of Process
1-2 months
Application
Phone Interview
Interview
The interview process at IMC Trading (or similar firms) usually starts with some kind of online test. It’s mostly coding stuff, algorithms, a bit stressful because it’s timed, but not too crazy.

After that, if you pass, a recruiter calls you. They ask why you like trading, what you did before, nothing too deep. Just making sure you’re a real person and not a bot.

Then come the technical interviews. This is where they really start digging. They ask a lot of low-level C++ questions — things like memory, move constructors, CPU caches, why the compiler does X, what happens if two threads write next to each other (false sharing stuff). Sometimes they ask you to explain your projects and they really grill you on them.

Later, if things go well, there is usually a “final round” or a superday. Multiple interviews in one day, more C++, more performance questions, some system design but low-latency style (nothing like web apps). They want to see how you think under pressure.

At the end, they also check culture fit, teamwork, and if you’re curious, quick learner, etc. If all goes well, they send an offer. If not, usually they give no details, just a short rejection email.
Interview Questions
One of the hardest questions I got was when they asked me to actually explain how smart pointers are implemented in C++, not just how to use them. I expected questions about unique_ptr or shared_ptr, but they wanted the low-level stuff. For example, they asked how shared_ptr stores its reference count, where the control block lives in memory, why atomic increments are needed, and what happens when two threads try to destroy the same object at the same time. They even wanted to know what happens when you copy a shared_ptr and how the destructor decides to delete both the object and the control block. It caught me off guard because it’s not something you write by hand often.

Another unexpectedly tough area was vtables. They asked things like:

“How does a vtable actually look in memory?”

“Where is the pointer to the vtable stored inside an object?”

“What happens to the vtable pointer when you use multiple inheritance?”

“How do virtual destructors change the layout?”
Sample Answer

Software Engineer Intern Interview - Prop Trading

Anonymous employee in Amsterdam
Interviewed: October 2025
Date Submitted: Nov 07, 2025
Outcome
Accepted Offer
Interview Source
Applied Online
Length of Process
1-2 months
Application
Phone Interview
1 on 1 Interview
Skills Test
Personality Test
Background Check
Interview
The application process at IMC begins with submitting an online application through their official careers website. After that, the first step is an online assessment, which typically includes two LeetCode-style algorithmic problems of medium to hard difficulty. These are designed to test your problem-solving ability, data structures knowledge, and efficiency under time pressure.

If you pass the coding assessment, the next step is a one-way video interview, where you record answers to a few technical and reasoning questions. For example, one question could involve designing an in-memory hotel booking system, where you must discuss which data structures you would use and why.

Following that, there’s a 15-minute recruiter screen. In this call, you briefly go through your background, motivation, and interest in trading or software development at IMC.

The next stage is the first technical round, which lasts around 45 minutes. This interview is highly conceptual and focuses on C++ (or Java, depending on your track), memory management, OS fundamentals, and data structures. Topics can include:

Differences between lists, sets, maps, and unordered maps

How hash tables work and how collisions are handled

Stack vs heap memory, cache organization (L1/L2/L3), and cache efficiency

Smart pointers, references vs pointers

Hardware-level memory management and caching behavior

You’re expected to explain how things work under the hood (e.g., CPU cache prefetching, memory fragmentation, virtual memory, etc.) and sometimes reason about performance or memory trade-offs.

If you advance, the final round typically consists of two parts:

A technical interview focused on building or extending a simple matching engine (simulating order matching logic).

A behavioral interview and informal chat with team members or a hiring manager, discussing teamwork, motivation, and fit within IMC’s culture.

Advice:
It’s best to study C++ internals, OS concepts (memory hierarchy, caching, virtual memory), and data structure performance in depth. Be prepared to reason about what happens “under the hood” rather than just giving definitions. The overall interview atmosphere is challenging but friendly—interviewers value clear, structured reasoning and curiosity about how systems work at a low level.
Interview Questions
Some of the most difficult and unexpected questions were those that tested low-level system understanding rather than just coding ability. For example, I was asked to deeply explain how memory and caching work on the hardware level, things like how the CPU cache hierarchy (L1/L2/L3) interacts with the stack and heap, why certain data structures are more “cache-friendly,” and what happens behind the scenes when you allocate memory dynamically.

Another tricky topic was hash tables: I had to explain how they’re implemented, how collisions are resolved (separate chaining vs. open addressing), the different types of probing, and which approach is more efficient in terms of time and memory trade-offs.

There were also conceptual performance questions, like:

“Sort the following from fastest to slowest and explain your reasoning: read from CPU cache, read from main memory, heap allocation, compute addition, read from disk.”

“How many cache misses would you expect in this code sequence?”

“How does virtual memory work, and why do we use it?”

On the networking side, I got some unexpected questions such as:

“What happens when you type ‘wikipedia.org’ in your browser?” (covering DNS lookup, IP translation, routing, TCP/UDP differences, etc.)

“Explain what a routing table is.”
Sample Answer

SWE Intern Interview - Software

Anonymous interview candidate in Amsterdam
Interviewed: May 2025
Date Submitted: Sep 23, 2025
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Applied Online
Length of Process
Less than 1 month
Application
Phone Interview
Personality Test
Interview
First there was an OA - two medium leetcode problems. Second, I had a Video Interview. There was a simple background question, one very simple question about the time complexity of some data structure operations, one question about computer architecture and a very simple system design question - there were 2 minutes for each of these questions with other 2 minutes for preparation.
Interview Questions
Is multi-threading always faster than single-threading?
Sample Answer

Quantitative Research Interview - Quantitative Trading

Anonymous interview candidate in Sydney
Interviewed: April 2025
Date Submitted: Apr 21, 2025
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Employee Referral
Length of Process
1-2 months
Application
Phone Interview
1 on 1 Interview
Skills Test
Interview
Psychometric teseting for speed and general cognitive ability. HR interview over the phone going through behavioural questions. Two technical assessments each 1 hour long with a quant researcher going through probability/statistics questions, and the second one going through ML concepts.
Interview Questions
Markov chain style question where three cities had a percentage of people leaving each day to the other cities and questions about the long run probabilities and matrix algebra.
Sample Answer

Graduate Quant Trader Interview - Trading

Anonymous interview candidate in Chicago
Interviewed: September 2024
Date Submitted: Oct 16, 2024
Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
Applied Online
Length of Process
Less than 1 month
Application
1 on 1 Interview
Interview
First round: HR interview with mostly behavioral questions + one short technical question

Second Round: Interview with Trader. Trading game involved betting + one probability question. Trading game needs to have quick answers as there is a ton of time pressure. Probability question was a pretty standard green book problem.
Interview Questions
They asked a trading game where you could bet on outcomes of events. They wanted to see how you acted when new information was presented. There was a time crunch so you have to calculate fast.
Sample Answer
video
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