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Optiver quant interview questions

23 questions · 3 reported stages · 6 hiring locations

What does the Optiver quant interview involve?

The Optiver quant loop runs 3 stages: numerical test, technical / probability, on-site. It tests probability, mental maths, market making, statistics above finance knowledge, and it is run across London, Chicago, Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Paris. The questions below are ours, written to rehearse the same reasoning.

What Optiver publishes about its hiring

Optiver Europe publishes a five-step process from application to offer, with different assessments for technology, trading and research roles. Checked against the firm's own pages on 18 October 2026.

Verified: stated by the firm

Estimate: our modelling and compilation

  • The 3-stage loop below is compiled from public sources and candidate reports, not published by Optiver as a single sequence.
  • Modelled mid-level total compensation, Quant Trader: about $420k USD. A KnowQuant estimate, not an employer figure.
  • Modelled mid-level total compensation, Quant Developer: about $320k USD. A KnowQuant estimate, not an employer figure.
  • Modelled mid-level total compensation, HFT / Low-Latency Engineer: about $380k USD. A KnowQuant estimate, not an employer figure.
  • The 23 practice questions are written by KnowQuant to rehearse the reasoning; they are not Optiver's questions.

Not stated by the firm

  • - The US stage list in the same detail
  • - Pay ranges outside jurisdictions that require them

Optiver 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 1Numerical test

    What happens in the numerical test at Optiver?

    Timed mental arithmetic and sequences - a genuine filter. It is stage 1 of 3 in the Optiver loop, and candidates who clear it move to the technical / probability.

    Next step: Technical / probability
  2. Stage 2Technical / probability

    What happens in the technical / probability at Optiver?

    Options intuition, expected value and market-making scenarios. It is stage 2 of 3 in the Optiver loop, and candidates who clear it move to the on-site.

    Next step: On-site
  3. Stage 3On-site

    What happens in the on-site at Optiver?

    Trading games, case discussion and culture assessment. It is stage 3 of 3 in the Optiver loop and it is the final decision point.

    Next step: rehearse the practice set

Practice questions matched to this loop

Filtered to the topics Optiver draws on for the roles it hires: probability, mental maths, market making, statistics, brainteaser, algorithms, c++ and systems, machine learning. 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.

Machine learningHardResearch round

A gradient-boosted model predicts next-hour returns with an out-of-sample R² of 0.004. Is that useful?

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.

Machine learningStandardResearch round

Why is k-fold cross-validation usually wrong for financial time series, and what do you use instead?

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?

Optiver 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 Optiver

How many interview stages does Optiver run?

3 published stages: numerical test, technical / probability, on-site. The sequence is the same across every office we track.

What topics does the Optiver quant interview test?

Mainly probability, mental maths, market making, statistics. Optiver hires for 4 quant families, so the technical rounds are weighted to the role rather than to finance knowledge.

How hard is the Optiver quant interview?

Hard by market standards. Our practice set for this loop runs to 23 questions, sorted with the hardest first, and the backgrounds that clear the bar are typically quantitative undergraduates and econometrics.

What does Optiver pay after a passed loop?

Optiver benchmarks at roughly 110% 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 Optiver hire quants?

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

Are these real Optiver 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 Optiver 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
  • -Econometrics
  • -Engineering graduates
Optiver firm profileEvery firm's loop

Live opportunities

Preparing for Optiver? See roles like theirs

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

Quant Trader jobs Quant Developer jobs HFT / Low-Latency Engineer jobs Quant Researcher jobs Jobs in Amsterdam Jobs in Chicago Jobs in London Jobs in Singapore All live roles

Hiring for these roles? Brief the desk on a hire or check your fit for a role.

Research desk

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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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Interview intelligence

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