Quant interview preparation

Prop market making and quantitative research, weighted the way the interviews actually are: probability and expected value, statistics and machine learning, market making logic, programming and options. Every question is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it, and every probability answer shows the reasoning path rather than just the number.

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Question bank

100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions
100
Traced to a firm
53
Firms
15
Updated
September 2026
Asked at
All firmsOld Mission Capital12Tower Research Capital10Jump Trading7Akuna Capital5Citadel4D.E. Shaw3Jane Street3AQR Capital Management2DRW2Millennium Management2Schonfeld2Squarepoint Capital2Susquehanna International Group2Belvedere Trading1Optiver1
Topic
All topicsProbability10Coins, cards and games6Expected value8Statistics11Market making15Estimation and mental maths4Stochastic processes4Regression5Machine learning6Time series6Programming10Options and derivatives8Fit and motivation7
Level
AnyCoreIntermediateHard
Type
AnyBrainteaserTechnicalCaseMarket viewFit
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  1. 095What do you like about our culture, and why us rather than another prop shop?Fit and motivationIntermediatetechnicalSusquehanna International GroupProp Trading · Dublin · 2025

    Say this

    Pick two or three things that are specific to them and that you can trace to something you have actually done or want. Generic praise is worse than saying less. And make one of the reasons about the work rather than the perks.

    Then walk it

    1. Do the homework that is actually available. How they train juniors, whether they trade their own capital, which products they are strongest in, whether teams are small and autonomous or large and specialised, and how they talk about decision-making in their own materials.
    2. Then connect it to yourself with evidence. If a firm is known for a structured decision-theory and poker-influenced training culture, say that you have played seriously, what it taught you about sizing and about separating process from outcome, and why you want that as the house language.
    3. Name the products or the seat. Wanting to trade options because you find the surface a genuinely hard pricing problem is a specific, checkable reason. Wanting to be at a firm because it is prestigious is not.
    4. Reference people if you have spoken to them, honestly. What you asked, what surprised you. A single concrete detail from a conversation beats a paragraph of adjectives.
    5. And say one thing you are testing rather than asserting. For example: what I have read suggests decisions are pushed down to small teams, and I want to check whether a first-year really gets to argue with a senior trader about a price. That turns the answer into a two-way conversation, which is what the question is for, and it is much harder to fake than flattery.

    Where candidates lose it

    Praising collaborative culture and meritocracy, which describes every firm's website. Also do not name a culture attribute you cannot connect to your own behaviour. The interviewer is testing whether you would fit and whether you have done any real diligence, so bring two specifics and one genuine question.

    Expect next

    • Who have you spoken to here?
    • What would make you turn down an offer from us?
    • What is your understanding of how we make money?

    Reported by candidates at Susquehanna International Group (Prop Trading, Dublin, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.