The Maven Securities Interview, Explained

Maven Securities is a London-headquartered options market maker hiring trading and quant roles through a process candidates describe as a textbook trading-firm funnel. (Based on consistent candidate reports; formats change — verify against your own invite.)

The reported stages

• Numerical/math screen. Timed arithmetic and probability under pressure — the standard market-maker gate, in the same family as Optiver's 80-in-8: speed and accuracy on mental calculation, sequences, and quick expected-value questions.
• Probability and brainteaser interviews. Expected value, conditional probability, and game pricing — "would you play this game, and at what price?" is the recurring shape.
• Trading games / market-making exercises. Live rounds where you quote two-way prices on uncertain quantities and update on flow — composure and sizing logic over precision.
• Options intuition (desk-dependent). As an options shop, later rounds can probe basic options reasoning: what moves an option's value, hedging intuition, and simple Greeks-level questions for experienced hires.

What Maven-type firms select for

Options market makers filter hardest on calibrated quick probability — fast expected values with stated confidence, sensible bet sizing, and updating without ego. The math bar is real but not exotic; the differentiation is doing it at speed, out loud, while someone pushes back.

Prep plan by stage

• Math screen: daily 80-in-8 runs + timed drilling in the probability bank.
• Interviews: the expectation bank (75 free, fully solved) and dice-game pricing — the exact question family.
• Games: the market-making game and betting game replicate the live rounds, including sizing under uncertainty (Kelly logic).
• Options: basic payoff/hedging intuition from the options bank.