Aquatic Capital Management hires Quant Researcher, Software Engineer and Systems Engineer. Candidates report 6 interview stages. Below: what each round tests and how to prepare, the timeline, pay and a 4-week prep plan, drawn from candidate reports.
Aquatic Capital Management interview: quick answer
- Stages6
- Online assessmentTimed · online (candidate-reported)
- Final roundLeadership Call: Conversational · senior leadership (candidate-reported)
- Pay (candidate-reported)Quantitative Researcher, 4+ yrs experience: $150k – $300k base total comp
- RolesQuant Researcher, Software Engineer, Systems Engineer
Preparing for Aquatic Capital Management? Work the rounds in order in the free Aquatic Capital Management interview funnel.
The Aquatic Capital Management interview process at a glance
| # | Round | Format and length | Prep |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Recruiter / HR Call | Phone · background + fit | GuidePractice |
| 2 | Online Assessment | Timed · online (candidate-reported) | OA guidePractice |
| 3 | Take-Home Theory + Data Exercise | Take-home · theory questions + a data task (candidate-reported) | GuidePractice |
| 4 | Quant Interviews | 2 rounds · with researchers (candidate-reported) | GuidePractice |
| 5 | Virtual Onsite | Virtual onsite · multiple rounds (candidate-reported) | GuidePractice |
| 6 | Leadership Call | Conversational · senior leadership (candidate-reported) | GuidePractice |
Stages are listed in the order candidates report them. Formats come from candidate reports and change between cycles, offices and teams; not every candidate sees every stage.
Every Aquatic Capital Management round: what it tests and how to prepare
1Recruiter / HR Call
An intro call covering background, motivation and logistics. Candidate-reported as the entry point for both research and engineering tracks.
How to prepare
- Have your research story in one paragraph — what you built, how you validated it, what it was worth.
- Confirm the office — QR roles are posted in Chicago, New York and London; engineering is Chicago-weighted.
2Online Assessment
Candidates report an online assessment before the interview rounds; on the engineering side a Python assessment via CodeSignal is mentioned. We have no reliable public description of the research-track OA contents, so this round is editorial-only. We have not reconstructed a problem set we cannot source.
How to prepare
- Python fluency is the common denominator — the early-career QR posting names Python explicitly, and the reported engineering assessment is Python.
- Warm up clean probability and statistics rather than exotic algorithms — the job spec emphasises statistical and applied-mathematical research.
- Unverified stage. Structure and length are candidate-reported; budget more time than you think you need.
Aquatic Capital Management online assessment guide →Practice this round →
3Take-Home: Theory + Data Exercise
One candidate account describes a take-home split into a theoretical portion and a data exercise, with the theory centred on linear regression. Regression theory is the single most concrete piece of Aquatic-specific intel we have, so make it the priority.
How to prepare
- Own OLS end to end — the normal equations, when (XᵀX)⁻¹ exists, Gauss–Markov, omitted-variable bias, and what R² does and does not tell you.
- Be ready for regularization — ridge / lasso trade-offs and why you would reach for either on noisy financial data.
- Show research hygiene in the write-up — Aquatic lists it first among behavioural requirements. State assumptions, show your validation, and say what would falsify your result.
4Quant Interviews
Two quant interviews follow the assessment. Round contents are not publicly documented, so this set is exactly the questions in our bank stamped as Aquatic-reported for these rounds:
It is deliberately not padded out with generic problems.
Question types: mostly expectation, probability and regression, especially correlation and variance. Latest candidate report for this round: Aug 2026.
How to prepare
- Distributional and regression reasoning are the confirmed flavour. The reported questions are moment and tail-bound calculations on transformed random variables, plus what OLS does and does not identify when the model is nonstandard.
- Reach for the standard bounds — Chebyshev, Markov, Jensen — and know when each is tight.
- Derive, don't recall — MGFs and transformation-of-variables get you the exponentiated-gamma style questions without memorising results.
Full Quant Interviews guide →Practice this round (3 questions) →
5Virtual Onsite
A virtual onsite follows the quant interviews. We have no sourced breakdown of who you meet or how many rounds. Expect the hardest variants of the research stack plus a deep-dive on your own work; Aquatic's postings stress independent research and originating research topics over time.
One 2026 candidate reports a final-round question on maximum entropy: over all densities on [0, 1], minimize the integral of f log f.
Question types: mostly optimization. Latest candidate report for this round: Sep 2026.
How to prepare
- Prepare one project to defend under sustained follow-up — every methodological choice, and what you would do differently.
- Be explicit about out-of-sample validation — overfitting and robustness are the natural probes for a signal-research shop.
- Know the classic variational results. A 2026 final round asked an optimization over densities; be ready to set up the Lagrangian and then prove the optimum is global, not just guess it.
Full Virtual Onsite guide →Practice this round (1 question) →
6Leadership Call
The reported final step is a leadership call. Aquatic is small and founder-led, so treat this as a real gate on judgement and fit rather than a formality.
How to prepare
- Have questions about the research platform — how signals go from research to production is the natural thing to ask a firm that builds its own R&D system.
Practice the Aquatic Capital Management rounds in order
Each round in the Aquatic Capital Management funnel has its own practice set, with worked solutions and progress tracking. A free account saves your progress across rounds.
A 4-week Aquatic Capital Management prep plan
Built from the order of Aquatic Capital Management's rounds and the topics in each round's practice set. Compress it if your first interview is sooner.
| When | Focus | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Foundations | Review probability, expectation and regression, the topics that dominate Aquatic Capital Management's practice sets. Start with Probability course and Statistics & regression course. Work the easy and medium questions in the Aquatic Capital Management question set. |
| Week 2 | Early rounds: Recruiter / HR Call and Online Assessment | Practice the screening topics under time pressure, and read the OA guide. Talk every answer through out loud; interviewers score the reasoning. |
| Week 3 | Later rounds: Take-Home, Quant Interviews, Virtual Onsite and Leadership Call | Move to probability, expectation and regression. Read how quant superdays work. |
| Week 4 | Rehearse the full loop | Run each practice round in order, redo the questions you missed, and prepare two project stories plus a specific answer to "why Aquatic Capital Management?" (see behavioral questions at trading firms). |
Aquatic Capital Management pay
| Role | Level | Total comp | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quantitative Researcher | 4+ yrs experience | $150k – $300k base | Employer-posted base band (Chicago / New York / London posting). Discretionary bonus on top, size undisclosed. |
| Software Engineer, C++ | 2+ yrs experience | $150k – $300k base | Employer-posted base band on the Market Data C++ posting. Same discretionary-bonus language as the research track. |
Total compensation means base salary plus bonus and any sign-on, as candidates self-report it. Job postings usually show base salary only, so posted figures and outside salary pages often look lower. These are employer-posted BASE salary ranges, not total comp and not offers. Aquatic states the role "may also be eligible for additional forms of compensation, such as a discretionary bonus" and that the "[d]iscretionary bonus can be a significant portion of total compensation" — so realized TC is materially higher and we have no reliable public bonus data. Source: Base-salary bands published by Aquatic on its own Greenhouse postings (July 2026). NOT candidate self-reports — but base only. Last updated July 25, 2026.
Aquatic Capital Management teams and what their interviews test
Aquatic's own job board splits into two departments: Research and Technology. Research roles are posted in Chicago, New York and London.
| Tracks | What it does | What its interviews test |
|---|---|---|
| Quantitative Researcher Researcher | Per Aquatic's posting: create and improve proprietary trading models, build predictive models from financial and other data, develop statistical and machine-learning models, and create algorithms to monetize predictive signals. | Online assessment → take-home / data exercise (regression theory reported) → two quant interviews → virtual onsite → leadership call. Candidate-reported. |
| Quantitative Researcher — Early Career / PhD Researcher | Same research system, entry track. Postings ask for a BS/MS (grad 2026–2027) or an active PhD/postdoc in maths, statistics, ML, physics or CS, with Python proficiency. | Aquatic explicitly lists strong math-competition results (IMO, Putnam) as a plus, so expect the technical bar to lean mathematical. |
| Software / Systems Engineer Engineer | The C++ posting is on the Market Data team: real-time market-data infrastructure from global exchanges, model deployment tooling, and latency / throughput work on live trading systems. | Posting asks for 2+ years of high-performance C++, order books and exchange microstructure, and Linux systems programming, networking and multithreading. Candidates report a Python coding assessment via CodeSignal on engineering-side loops. |
About Aquatic Capital Management
| Firm type | Systematic quantitative hedge fund |
|---|---|
| Trading style | Statistical + machine-learning signal research · Systematic — frequency not publicly disclosed |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, IL |
| Other offices | New York, London |
| Assets under management | ~$5.4B (Form ADV) |
| Employees | ~90 (Form ADV) |
Founded 2018 out of Citadel's quant business
Aquatic was established in 2018 by Jonathan Graham, who spent more than 13 years at Citadel as a Partner and Senior Managing Director and led its Global Quantitative Strategies business before leaving in 2017. The management entity, Aquatic Capital Management LLC, has been SEC-registered since January 2021 and reports roughly $5.4B in discretionary AUM and about 90 employees on its Form ADV. Offices are in Chicago (HQ), New York and London.
Culture
A young, still-small research house founded out of Citadel's Global Quantitative Strategies leadership.
What the interviews feel like
Research-rigor driven rather than trading-game driven: candidates report an online assessment, a take-home / data exercise with theoretical follow-ups (linear regression theory came up specifically), then quant interviews, a virtual onsite, and a leadership call. No market-making game is reported. Public detail on the individual rounds is genuinely scarce — prepare the core statistics / regression / probability stack and be ready to defend your own research.
Practice for Aquatic Capital Management on QuantVault
Practice
Courses
Further reading
- How quant superdays work
- Behavioral questions at trading firms
- Market-making game interview guide
- The quant interview process, explained
Similar firms to compare
Firms with a similar business and interview style. Many candidates interview at several of them in the same cycle.
Sources and how this guide is built
- Updated October 20, 2026; firm data last reviewed October 16, 2026; pay last updated July 25, 2026.
- Round detail draws on 4 questions candidates report from Aquatic Capital Management interviews (the most recent report across all rounds is from Sep 2026). A separate curated Aquatic Capital Management question set of 23 problems collects the most useful practice for this firm.
- Public candidate reports and outside interview guides are cross-checked against each other. Where they disagree the page says "reports differ"; details from a single source are marked as candidate reports.
- No actual interview questions are reproduced on this page. The questions, with worked solutions, are in the practice rounds.
Aquatic Capital Management interview FAQ
How many rounds are in the Aquatic Capital Management interview?
Candidates report 6 stages: Recruiter / HR Call, Online Assessment, Take-Home, Quant Interviews, Virtual Onsite, Leadership Call. The exact number varies by cycle and team.
Is there an online assessment at Aquatic Capital Management?
Candidates report one: Timed · online (candidate-reported). Candidates report an online assessment before the interview rounds; on the engineering side a Python assessment via CodeSignal is mentioned. We have no reliable public description of the research-track OA contents, so this round is editorial-only.
What happens in the Aquatic Capital Management final round?
Leadership Call (Conversational · senior leadership (candidate-reported)). The reported final step is a leadership call. Aquatic is small and founder-led, so treat this as a real gate on judgement and fit rather than a formality.
How much does Aquatic Capital Management pay?
Candidate-reported total compensation: Quantitative Researcher (4+ yrs experience) $150k – $300k base; Software Engineer, C++ (2+ yrs experience) $150k – $300k base. These are self-reported totals including bonus, not offers; job postings usually list base salary only.
How should I prepare for the Aquatic Capital Management interview?
Prepare round by round over about four weeks: foundations first, then the early rounds (Recruiter / HR Call, Online Assessment, Take-Home), then the later rounds, then a full rehearsal. Each round has its own practice set on QuantVault, and the online assessment has a dedicated guide.
What does Aquatic Capital Management do?
Aquatic Capital Management is a systematic quantitative hedge fund headquartered in Chicago, IL. Aquatic was established in 2018 by Jonathan Graham, who spent more than 13 years at Citadel as a Partner and Senior Managing Director and led its Global Quantitative Strategies business before leaving in 2017.
Does Aquatic publish its interview process?
No. The stages described here come from candidate reports.
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