IMC Trading hires Quant Trader, Quant Researcher and Software Engineer / Quant Performance Engineer. Candidates report 4 to 5 interview stages depending on the track (7 distinct rounds across all tracks). Below: what each round tests and how to prepare, the path by track, the timeline, pay and a 4-week prep plan, drawn from candidate reports and IMC's own recruiting pages.
IMC Trading interview: quick answer
- StagesBy track: Quant Trader: 5 · Quant Researcher: 4 · Software Engineer: 4 (7 distinct rounds across all tracks)
- Online assessmentTrader/QR: varies by cycle (NeurOlympics games ~45 min, SHL ~40 min, or a 60-min numerical test) · SWE ~120 min · HackerRank / Codility
- TimelineOne outside guide puts the process at three to six weeks; IMC says it aims to give feedback within a couple of days of the final round.
- Final roundSuperday / Virtual Onsite: Onsite or virtual · ~5 rounds across the day
- Pay (candidate-reported)Quant Trader, New grad: $250k – $400k total comp
- RolesQuant Trader, Quant Researcher, Software Engineer / Quant Performance Engineer
Preparing for IMC Trading? Work the rounds in order in the free IMC Trading interview funnel, or start with the free online-assessment sample (no signup).
The IMC interview process at a glance
| # | Round | Format and length | Who takes it | Prep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Online Assessment | Trader/QR: varies by cycle (NeurOlympics games ~45 min, SHL ~40 min, or a 60-min numerical test) · SWE ~120 min · HackerRank / Codility | All tracks | OA guidePractice |
| 2 | Recorded Video Interview | One-way · HireVue · scored as part of the OA | Quant Trader, Software Engineer | GuidePractice |
| 3 | HR / Recruiter Phone Screen | 10 to 45 min · phone / Zoom · usually after the OA and recorded video | All tracks | GuidePractice |
| 4 | Trader / Market-Making Game Round | 30–45 min · interactive · with a trader | Quant Trader | GuidePractice |
| 5 | Technical Round | 45–60 min · video · math / stats / coding / ML | Quant Researcher | GuidePractice |
| 6 | Onsite Coding + Systems | 2-hr sessions · live coding + systems deep-dive | Software Engineer | GuidePractice |
| 7 | Superday / Virtual Onsite | Onsite or virtual · ~5 rounds across the day | Quant Trader, Quant Researcher | GuidePractice |
Stages are listed in the order candidates report them. Formats come from candidate reports and change between cycles, offices and teams; the "Who takes it" column shows which track each round belongs to.
How the IMC process differs by track
IMC runs separate loops for different roles. Here is the path each track reports, in order:
- Quant Trader (5 stages): Online Assessment → Recorded Video Interview → HR / Recruiter Phone Screen → Trader / Market-Making Game Round → Superday / Virtual Onsite
IMC's own outline is application review, assessment, a first round, a final round of stations, then an offer. - Quant Researcher (4 stages): Online Assessment → HR / Recruiter Phone Screen → Technical Round → Superday / Virtual Onsite
Research candidates report a psychometric or numerical test, a recruiter call, then researcher-led technical and machine-learning rounds. - Software Engineer (4 stages): Online Assessment → Recorded Video Interview → HR / Recruiter Phone Screen → Onsite Coding + Systems
Engineers take a HackerRank test of two problems in about two hours, then a final round of live coding, low-level design and systems questions.
Not sure which track fits you? See quant trader vs quant researcher.
Every IMC round: what it tests and how to prepare
1Online Assessment
Track-split, and the trader format changes by cycle and region. Trader / QR: European and US candidates in 2025/26 report NeurOlympics, four cognitive games in about 45 minutes; the US Summer 2027 cohort reports an SHL IMC Trader Assessment (personality + inductive reasoning, ~40 min). Some cohorts instead report a timed numerical-reasoning test of 15 questions in 60 minutes (probability, combinatorics, logic such as knights & knaves, information-gain / decision trees, graph connectivity, sequences); reports differ on which years used it. SWE / Quant-Perf: 120 min, 2 algorithmic problems on HackerRank/Codility (grid BFS, simulation, data-structure design) where timing out is the common failure.
How to prepare
- QR: speed + breadth. 15 questions in 60 minutes means ~4 min each across probability, combinatorics, logic, and info-gain. Drill EV, conditional probability, and decision-tree splits to reflex.
- SWE: correctness AND complexity. The two algo problems (grid BFS, simulation, O(1) data-structure design) are designed so brute force TLEs. Get the optimal complexity before you code.
2Recorded Video Interview
A one-way recorded video interview, scored alongside the online assessment. Reports differ on its content: QuantVault reports describe several motivation and behavioural prompts on HireVue with short think-time, while recent outside reports describe about three prompts, usually two on motivation and one probability question, on SparkHire or HireVue, sometimes due within 48 hours.
How to prepare
- Treat it as graded — because it is. It rolls into your OA score. Rehearse crisp 60–90s answers; structure them and don't ramble into the time limit.
3HR / Recruiter Phone Screen
Early step, every track: logistics, 'tell me about yourself', IMC's signature 'Why IMC?' and 'Why trading?' (asked again later), often a light coin-flip-with-an-edge brain-teaser (EV, bankroll).
- Recent QR and QT reports: it can follow the OA (one quant trader invite came about 3 days later); HR told that candidate: no technical questions. QR hears back in 1 to 2 weeks.
- Candidates report admin (graduation date, visa or sponsorship, notice period, expected salary, work mode), why IMC, QR and trading, and a deep dive on two resume research projects.
- Behaviorals: a hard-to-hear opinion, an advisor changing your approach, a research project end to end, conflict, failure, competition, team role; other firms, choosing between offers.
- QR: applying machine learning in finance. A quant trader intern screen had a card suit-guessing bet, framed on risk appetite, not math.
- In the order IMC's APAC article and recent candidates describe, this call comes after the online assessment and the recorded video, not before.
Question types: mostly expectation and probability, especially expected value and discrete probability. Latest candidate report for this round: Nov 2024.
How to prepare
- Nail 'Why IMC' and 'Why trading' early. They recur at every stage. Make them specific and personal, not generic — tie them to something concrete about you and the firm.
- Have your logistics straight. Visa/sponsorship comes up immediately; APAC and EU offices differ on sponsorship.
- Prepare two research projects in depth. QR screens walk through two resume projects end to end and ask how ML would make money in practice, so have the problem, your method, the result and a performance number (Sharpe, P&L or accuracy) ready for each.
Full HR / Recruiter Phone Screen guide →Practice this round (4 questions) →
4Trader / Market-Making Game Round
The decisive trading round: a trader runs a market-making or betting scenario. Candidates describe sports-style betting boards where you track profit and loss bet by bet and across the whole bankroll, card-guessing games with an edge, and pairs or price-movement bets. It rewards expected-value thinking, Bayesian updating and bankroll discipline.
Question types: mostly expectation, game theory and finance, especially expected value, conditional probability, discrete probability and portfolio theory. Latest candidate report for this round: Jan 2026.
How to prepare
- Track P&L continuously — per bet AND across the book. The scenarios deliberately span multiple bets; show you're managing the whole bankroll, not each bet in isolation.
- Update as information arrives. Card-suit and betting boards reward Bayesian updating — recompute your edge after each reveal and re-size.
- Size by EV and edge. Bet more on fat edges, less on thin ones; never bet so big a bad beat wrecks the bankroll. Verbalize the EV.
Full Trader / Market-Making Game Round guide →Practice this round (13 questions) →
5Technical Round
The quant research technical round: probability and statistics, a dynamic-programming or combinatorics coding problem, and, for the machine-learning variant, ML fundamentals (information gain, decision trees, classification, model trade-offs) plus an ML coding task and a Monte Carlo or optimization segment. Derivations are expected, not just answers.
Question types: mostly probability, combinatorics and expectation, especially discrete probability, conditional probability, expected value and independence. Latest candidate report for this round: Jun 2026.
How to prepare
- Be fluent in the ML basics they probe: information gain / decision-tree splits, bias-variance & regularization, and when a simple model beats a complex one.
- Expect a clean coding problem (2-D DP, combination sum) alongside the math — practice translating a probability/combinatorics setup into code.
Full Technical Round guide →Practice this round (38 questions) →
6Onsite Coding + Systems
The engineering onsite: live coding (often 2-hour sessions) plus a deep systems/OS round: CPU, TLB, segfaults, signals & signal masks, C++ internals, Linux debugging, REST/asyncio. Chicago/Amsterdam systems-engineer onsites can simulate a server-outage triage with many candidates. The Python-developer variant swaps in a 3-5 hr take-home with a README and library-choice justification.
Question types: mostly coding and optimization, especially data structures, graph algorithms, complexity analysis and sorting and searching. Latest candidate report for this round: Sep 2025.
How to prepare
- Cleanliness + complexity. Get a correct solution fast, then drive the optimization conversation (the OA-style TLE traps recur live).
- Systems depth is non-negotiable. Have a 30-second story for cache/TLB, signals & masks, contention, and how you'd debug a Linux production issue.
- For the take-home: justify your library choices and write a clear README — they grade engineering judgment, not just a passing script.
Full Onsite Coding + Systems guide →Practice this round (15 questions) →
7Superday / Virtual Onsite
The culmination: often a combined trading-floor superday. ~5 rounds: rapid probability/quant-reasoning (~4 min each), brain teasers (~1 hr), a coding block (~1 hr), game-theory problems, Fermi/market-sizing estimation, and the recurring behavioral pair. Strong quantitative-product knowledge expected.
- The final round runs as stations: a trading simulator where you defend your earlier quotes, a quant station with senior traders, a behavioural interview, and informal time on a desk.
Question types: mostly game theory, coding and probability, especially expected value, combinatorics, conditional probability and discrete probability. Latest candidate report for this round: Jun 2026.
How to prepare
- Pace the rapid-fire round. ~4 minutes per probability question — bank the ones you see instantly, flag the rest, and keep moving.
- Game theory shows up. Turn-taking / combinatorial games (newspaper delivery) reward finding the invariant or backward induction, not brute force.
- Fermi with a range. Market-sizing questions want a structured estimate plus a confidence interval, not a single guess.
Full Superday / Virtual Onsite guide →Practice this round (21 questions) →
Practice the IMC rounds in order
Each round in the IMC funnel has its own practice set, with worked solutions and progress tracking. A free account saves your progress across rounds.
Recent changes
The trader assessment changes by cycle and region. European and US candidates in 2025 and 2026 report the NeurOlympics games test, while the US Summer 2027 cohort reports an SHL test that pairs a personality questionnaire with inductive reasoning.
Timeline
- One outside guide puts the whole process at three to six weeks.
- The online assessment usually follows a CV screen rather than arriving automatically; one guide quotes a 2024 posting allowing up to three weeks for application review.
- IMC says it pays for flights and a hotel for final-round candidates and aims to give feedback within a couple of days.
- Two outside guides report one application per role per year.
Regional differences
- Amsterdam: the full pipeline described here, with the NeurOlympics games test in 2025 and 2026.
- Chicago: the final round is held in the office.
- Sydney: the online assessment comes first, per IMC's APAC preparation article; one outside guide reports a minimum Distinction average.
- India: candidates report an SHL-based assessment and a CGPA cutoff (one outside guide).
Intern vs full-time
Interns and graduates go through the same funnel. Launchpad is a separate early-insight programme for earlier-year students that feeds into the internship pipeline. After an offer, graduates attend a track school; one outside guide puts Trading School at about six weeks, Dev School at five and FPGA School at three.
A 4-week IMC prep plan
Built from the order of IMC Trading's rounds on the Quant Trader path and the topics in each round's practice set. Compress it if your first interview is sooner. Other tracks can swap in their own rounds from the table above.
| When | Focus | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Foundations | Review probability, coding and expectation, the topics that dominate IMC Trading's practice sets. Start with Probability course and Quant coding course. Work the easy and medium questions in the IMC Trading question set. |
| Week 2 | Early rounds: Online Assessment, Recorded Video Interview, HR / Recruiter Phone Screen and Trader / Market-Making Game Round | Practice expectation, game theory and probability under time pressure, and take the free OA sample (format notes in the OA guide). Add a daily mental-math drill. Talk every answer through out loud; interviewers score the reasoning. |
| Week 3 | Later rounds: Superday / Virtual Onsite | Move to probability, coding and optimization. Do timed coding sessions in your interview language. 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 IMC Trading?" (see behavioral questions at trading firms). |
IMC pay
| Role | Level | Total comp | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quant Trader | New grad | $250k – $400k | US new-grad trader package incl. sign-on + bonus; strongly performance-tied after year one. |
| Quant Researcher | New grad / PhD | $250k – $400k | Research track; smaller, volatile headcount. Comp tracks the trading side. |
| SWE / Quant Performance Engineer | New grad | $180k – $300k | Strong engineering comp; below the trading tracks for equivalent tenure. |
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. Rough ranges, NOT offers. IMC pays competitively for a market maker; trader comp is heavily performance/bonus-driven and varies by office (US offices pay above APAC). Source: Candidate self-reports (levels.fyi, Glassdoor, and candidate forums) — not employer-verified. Last updated May 29, 2026.
IMC teams and what their interviews test
IMC hires Traders, Quant Researchers, and Software / Quant Performance Engineers. Candidates report an online assessment first, then (for most tracks) a recorded video interview and a recruiter call, before the tracks diverge: Traders go to market-making game scenarios and a quant superday; QR adds a hard math/stats/ML technical round; SWE/quant-perf runs an algorithm-heavy OA and a coding + systems (OS/Linux/C++) onsite.
| Tracks | What it does | What its interviews test |
|---|---|---|
| Quant Trader (QT) Trader | Live options/ETF market making. Pricing and risk under time pressure. | Online assessment (format varies by cycle) → recorded video → recruiter call (why IMC, why trading) → trader-led market-making / betting round (P&L tracking, bankroll) → superday stations. |
| Quant Researcher (QR) Quant Researcher | Signal/pricing research feeding the desks. ML-leaning on the ML-QR variant. | Online assessment → recruiter call → technical round (math, stats, coding, ML fundamentals) → superday (brain teasers, coding, game theory). |
| SWE / Quant Performance Engineer Software Engineer | Low-latency trading systems, performance, exchange connectivity. | Algorithm OA + recorded VI → HR → virtual onsite: live coding PLUS deep OS/systems. Python-dev variant has a 3–5 hr take-home. |
About IMC
| Firm type | Proprietary options / ETF market maker |
|---|---|
| Trading style | Trading-game + numerical-reasoning driven · High-frequency market making |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Headquarters | Amsterdam, NL |
| Other offices | Chicago, Sydney, Mumbai, Shanghai |
| Net trading rev. | ~$2.24B (2024) |
| Employees | ~1,600 |
| Reported performance | $2.24B NTR (2024, +63%) |
| Official steps | Application review, assessment and/or interview, first round, final round of stations, offer |
| Trader OA (2025/26, EU and US) | NeurOlympics: four cognitive games, about 45 minutes |
| Trader OA (US Summer 2027 cohort) | SHL IMC Trader Assessment: personality plus inductive reasoning, about 40 minutes |
Founded 1989 in Amsterdam
IMC (International Marketmakers Combination) was founded in 1989 in Amsterdam and grew into a global proprietary trading / market-making firm with hubs in Chicago, Sydney, and Mumbai. It trades its own capital and is known for combining floor-trading roots with a serious low-latency engineering org.
Culture
Trading-floor energy with a strong engineering core. Recruiting moves fast — superdays are scheduled within days — but headcount is volatile (QR seats are repeatedly noted as frozen or filled). Amsterdam and Sydney flag visa-sponsorship limits.
What the interviews feel like
Process-heavy: a timed numerical OA + a one-way recorded video interview do the early filtering. The make-or-break human round is a trader-led market-making / betting scenario where P&L tracking and bankroll discipline matter most.
Practice for IMC on QuantVault
Practice
Courses
Games and drills
Further reading
- How quant superdays work
- Market-making game interview guide
- Behavioral questions at trading firms
- Mental math for trading interviews
- C++ and low-latency interview questions
- Fermi estimation questions
- 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 9, 2026; pay last updated May 29, 2026.
- Round detail draws on 58 questions candidates report from IMC Trading interviews (the most recent report across all rounds is from Jun 2026). A separate curated IMC question set of 84 problems collects the most useful practice for this firm.
- IMC Trading's own pages: IMC recruitment process (Europe) · How to prepare for an interview at IMC (APAC).
- 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.
IMC interview FAQ
How many rounds are in the IMC Trading interview?
It depends on the track: Quant Trader: 5; Quant Researcher: 4; Software Engineer: 4 stages. Across all tracks candidates report 7 distinct rounds: Online Assessment, Recorded Video Interview, HR / Recruiter Phone Screen, Trader / Market-Making Game Round, Technical Round, Onsite Coding + Systems, Superday / Virtual Onsite.
How long does the IMC Trading interview process take?
One outside guide puts the process at three to six weeks; IMC says it aims to give feedback within a couple of days of the final round.
Does the IMC Trading process differ by role?
Yes. Quant Trader: Online Assessment, Recorded Video Interview, HR / Recruiter Phone Screen, Trader / Market-Making Game Round, Superday / Virtual Onsite. Quant Researcher: Online Assessment, HR / Recruiter Phone Screen, Technical Round, Superday / Virtual Onsite. Software Engineer: Online Assessment, Recorded Video Interview, HR / Recruiter Phone Screen, Onsite Coding + Systems.
How much does IMC Trading pay?
Candidate-reported total compensation: Quant Trader (New grad) $250k – $400k; Quant Researcher (New grad / PhD) $250k – $400k; SWE / Quant Performance Engineer (New grad) $180k – $300k. These are self-reported totals including bonus, not offers; job postings usually list base salary only.
How should I prepare for the IMC Trading interview?
Prepare round by round over about four weeks: foundations first, then the early rounds (Online Assessment, Recorded Video Interview, HR / Recruiter Phone Screen), 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 IMC Trading do?
IMC Trading is a proprietary options / ETF market maker headquartered in Amsterdam, NL. IMC (International Marketmakers Combination) was founded in 1989 in Amsterdam and grew into a global proprietary trading / market-making firm with hubs in Chicago, Sydney, and Mumbai. It trades its own capital and is known for combining floor-trading roots with a serious low-latency engineering org.
Which online assessment will I get at IMC?
It depends on your cycle and region. Recent European and US trader applicants report NeurOlympics, four games in about 45 minutes. The US Summer 2027 cohort reports an SHL test of personality and inductive reasoning, about 40 minutes. Check recent reports for your own cohort.
Does IMC cover travel for the final round?
IMC says it pays for flights and a hotel for final-round candidates and aims to give feedback within a couple of days.
Can I reapply to IMC?
Two outside guides report one application per role per year, so a rejected applicant normally waits for the next season.
Is the IMC online assessment sent automatically?
Usually not. One outside guide reports a CV screen first, with waits of up to about five weeks before the test link arrives.
Start preparing for IMC Trading
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