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IMC Trading quant interview questions

21 questions · 3 reported stages · 7 hiring locations

What does the IMC Trading quant interview involve?

The IMC Trading quant loop runs 3 stages: assessment, technical interview, final. It tests probability, mental maths, market making, statistics above finance knowledge, and it is run across London, Chicago, Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Sydney, Mumbai. The questions below are ours, written to rehearse the same reasoning.

What IMC Trading publishes about its hiring

IMC publishes a five-step European process and states that assessments and final rounds vary by role. It says finance experience is not required for interns and graduates. Checked against the firm's own pages on 18 October 2026.

Verified: stated by the firm

Official process: Europe (all roles)

  1. Application and review
  2. Assessments (format varies by role)
  3. First-round interview(s)
  4. Final-round interview(s), often multiple stations
  5. Offer

Estimate: our modelling and compilation

  • The 3-stage loop below is compiled from public sources and candidate reports, not published by IMC Trading as a single sequence.
  • Modelled mid-level total compensation, Quant Trader: about $390k USD. A KnowQuant estimate, not an employer figure.
  • Modelled mid-level total compensation, Quant Developer: about $300k USD. A KnowQuant estimate, not an employer figure.
  • Modelled mid-level total compensation, HFT / Low-Latency Engineer: about $360k USD. A KnowQuant estimate, not an employer figure.
  • The 21 practice questions are written by KnowQuant to rehearse the reasoning; they are not IMC Trading's questions.

Not stated by the firm

  • - Exact assessment content per role
  • - Number of final-round stations
  • - Pay ranges outside jurisdictions that require them

IMC Trading sources

Primary material read while writing this piece. Firm specific practices are attributed to the firm that published them and should not be read as industry wide.

The loop as candidates report it (compiled, not official)

Each round answers the question candidates actually ask, then points at the round that follows it.

  1. Stage 1Assessment

    What happens in the assessment at IMC Trading?

    Numerical reasoning and logic. It is stage 1 of 3 in the IMC Trading loop, and candidates who clear it move to the technical interview.

    Next step: Technical interview
  2. Stage 2Technical interview

    What happens in the technical interview at IMC Trading?

    Probability, options and programming depending on track. It is stage 2 of 3 in the IMC Trading loop, and candidates who clear it move to the final.

    Next step: Final
  3. Stage 3Final

    What happens in the final at IMC Trading?

    Trading simulation and team interviews. It is stage 3 of 3 in the IMC Trading loop and it is the final decision point.

    Next step: rehearse the practice set

Practice questions matched to this loop

Filtered to the topics IMC Trading draws on for the roles it hires: probability, mental maths, market making, statistics, brainteaser, algorithms, c++ and systems. Written originally for this platform, so they rehearse the reasoning rather than republish anyone's question bank.

ProbabilityHardResearch round

You draw cards one at a time without replacement from a standard 52-card deck until the first ace appears. What is the expected number of cards drawn?

Market makingHardTrading round

You are quoting a market and get lifted five times in a row on the offer, in full size, by the same counterparty. Nothing else in the market has moved. What do you do?

StatisticsHardResearch round

Your alpha shows a strong in-sample relationship with next-day returns, but the effect halves out of sample. Give three explanations that are not overfitting.

AlgorithmsHardEngineering round

You receive a stream of order-book updates and must report the maximum trade price in the last N events at every step. How?

C++ and systemsHardEngineering round

Your median tick-to-trade latency is fine but the 99.9th percentile is ten times worse. Name the likely causes.

BrainteaserHardFirst round

One hundred prisoners each open 50 of 100 boxes searching for their own number; all must succeed or all fail. What strategy beats a vanishingly small success rate?

ProbabilityStandardFirst round

Two people independently pick a real number uniformly from [0, 1]. What is the probability the two numbers differ by more than 0.25?

ProbabilityStandardFirst round

A random walk starts at 0 and moves +1 or −1 with equal probability each step. What is the probability it reaches +3 before it reaches −5?

Mental mathsStandardFirst round

Estimate the square root of 4,600 to one decimal place in under ten seconds.

Mental mathsStandardTrading round

A contract pays 100 if an event happens and 0 otherwise. It trades at 37. You think the true probability is 41%. You can trade 500 contracts. What is your expected edge?

Market makingStandardTrading round

I roll two fair six-sided dice and pay you the product. Make me a market, two wide.

Market makingStandardTrading round

Make a market on the number of petrol stations in the United Kingdom.

StatisticsStandardResearch round

You backtest 200 signals and the best one has a Sharpe ratio of 2.4. Should you trade it?

StatisticsStandardFirst round

Two return series each have a correlation of 0.6 with a third. What is the tightest bound you can put on their correlation with each other?

AlgorithmsStandardEngineering round

Design a data structure that supports insert, delete and get-random-element, all in expected O(1).

AlgorithmsStandardEngineering round

How would you implement a limit order book supporting add, cancel and match, and what is the complexity of each?

C++ and systemsStandardEngineering round

Why might std::unordered_map be a poor choice on a latency-critical hot path?

C++ and systemsStandardEngineering round

Explain false sharing and how you would detect it in a multi-threaded market data handler.

BrainteaserStandardFirst round

You have 25 horses and a track that races five at a time, with no timer. What is the minimum number of races to find the fastest three?

ProbabilityWarm-upPhone screen

You flip a fair coin three times. Given that at least one flip came up heads, what is the probability all three were heads?

Mental mathsWarm-upPhone screen

What is 17 × 23, without writing anything down?

IMC Trading interview questions by city

The same loop, read against the local market: what the desk hires for, how the round is run there, and what a passed loop pays in the local currency.

Questions candidates ask about IMC Trading

How many interview stages does IMC Trading run?

3 published stages: assessment, technical interview, final. The sequence is the same across every office we track.

What topics does the IMC Trading quant interview test?

Mainly probability, mental maths, market making, statistics. IMC Trading hires for 3 quant families, so the technical rounds are weighted to the role rather than to finance knowledge.

How hard is the IMC Trading quant interview?

Hard by market standards. Our practice set for this loop runs to 21 questions, sorted with the hardest first, and the backgrounds that clear the bar are typically quantitative undergraduates and computer science.

What does IMC Trading pay after a passed loop?

IMC Trading benchmarks at roughly 105% of the market figure for the same role and seniority. Published ranges are held per role, seniority and market in the local currency.

Where does IMC Trading hire quants?

London, Chicago, Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Sydney, Mumbai. Each market carries its own benchmark in the local currency.

Are these real IMC Trading interview questions?

No. Stage detail is compiled from public sources and candidate reports and labelled as such. Every question is written originally for this platform to rehearse the same reasoning, so nothing here republishes a firm's own question bank.

How IMC Trading compares

Side by side on modelled pay, interview stages, offices and the roles each firm hires for.

Roles this loop leads to

Each one carries a published benchmark by seniority and market.

Backgrounds that clear this bar

  • -Quantitative undergraduates
  • -Computer science
  • -Physics
IMC Trading firm profileEvery firm's loop

Live opportunities

Preparing for IMC Trading? See roles like theirs

Open vacancies we track at quant firms, grouped by role and city. Adverts are anonymised.

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Stage detail is compiled from public sources and candidate reports and is labelled as such. Questions are written originally for this platform. We do not republish any firm's proprietary interview questions.

Methodology

Figures are expressed as annual total compensation (base salary plus expected performance bonus) in the reference market's local currency, converted from a US dollar base. They describe typical market ranges rather than any individual offer, and exclude sign-on payments, deferred equity and carried interest. Portfolio-manager figures reflect formulaic profit-share arrangements and are therefore far more dispersed than any other role.

KnowQuantIndex 2026.1 · Updated September 2026

Modelled bands describe the market, not an individual offer. Where an employer states pay, the stated figure is used and labelled as such.

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The loop, the reasoning it tests, and what the role pays once you clear it.