D. E. Shaw Online Assessment
D. E. Shaw's SDE screen is a CodeSignal coding OA - 90 minutes, 4 problems, harder than most peer OAs, from a well-corroborated recurring bank. The Quant-Research / Quant-Analyst track is instead phone/video interviews (research deep-dive + probability brain-teasers, e.g. heaviest-of-N balls, E|U-V|=1/3, draws-to-exceed-1 = e), and the Data-Engineering & Visualization analyst track is a pandas + chi-squared take-home case - those are live, not on the bank. The auto-graded SDE problems (plus the Arcesium spin-off OA) are below.
Software Engineer — SDE CodeSignal OA
The recurring SDE bank (corroborated across 6+ sittings): count pairs with a target difference under online insert/delete, pairs equal after a digit transposition, planting/cutting trees by empty-segment length, the 1000x1000 largest plus/cross, subset-sum coin selection closest to a target, and suffix-pair counting. All auto-graded below.
- Count Pairs With a Given Difference (Online) Coding · medium
- Pairs Equal After a Digit Transposition Coding · medium
- Planting Trees: Empty Segments of Min Length Coding · medium
- Largest Plus / Cross in a Grid Coding · medium
- Coin Selection Closest to a Target Coding · medium
- Count Suffix Pairs Coding · easy
Arcesium (D. E. Shaw spin-off) — Post-trade-tech OA
Arcesium (the DE Shaw post-trade-technology spin-off) gives a separate OA. The captured problem is a FIFO Tax Calculator: parse a trade tape, match lots FIFO (with short selling), and compute the tax on net realized gain in accounting notation.
- FIFO Tax Calculator Coding · hard
D. E. Shaw OA — FAQ
What is the D. E. Shaw online assessment?
D. E. Shaw's SDE screen is a CodeSignal coding OA - 90 minutes, 4 problems, harder than most peer OAs, from a well-corroborated recurring bank. The Quant-Research / Quant-Analyst track is instead phone/video interviews (research deep-dive + probability brain-teasers, e.g. heaviest-of-N balls, E|U-V|=1/3, draws-to-exceed-1 = e), and the Data-Engineering & Visualization analyst track is a pandas + chi-squared take-home case - those are live, not on the bank. The auto-graded SDE problems (plus the Arcesium spin-off OA) are below.
What is the format of the D. E. Shaw OA?
It runs as 2 tracks (SDE CodeSignal OA, Post-trade-tech OA). Software Engineer, Arcesium (D. E. Shaw spin-off) — each timed, auto-graded where applicable.
How do I practice for the D. E. Shaw online assessment?
Work the sample questions above (each with a full worked solution), then take the interactive D. E. Shaw OA practice on QuantVault. For the full interview, see the D. E. Shaw interview-questions set.