Susquehanna (SIG) Interview Process & Prep
SIG runs its hiring like a poker table: a recycled probability/logic Problem-Solving Assessment is sent BEFORE they read your resume, and the culture rewards expected-value thinking, game theory, and actual card games. The process is long (often 8–11 rounds over ~2 months) and famously flaky, but the bar is intuition and EV reasoning, not rote rigor.
The Susquehanna (SIG) interview funnel
1. Problem-Solving Assessment (OA)
17 questions · 60 min · Mettl · sent before resume reviewThe gate for everything — graded BEFORE a recruiter reads your resume. A near-static, recycled bank (only numbers change) of grade-school logic + probability: leg-counting, knights & knaves, Bayes tables, dice EV, binomial 'enough muffins', combinatoric arrangements, a bold-betting Markov chain, and a no-3-consecutive lattice-path DP. Time-pressured and scored — acing it is necessary, not sufficient. SWE applicants instead get a CodeSignal coding OA (4 problems / 70 min).
2. Technical HR / Recruiter Screen
30–45 min · audio ZoomDespite the 'HR' name, this is technical. After a self-intro and a chat about your interests (mention poker/bridge/mahjong), the recruiter reads you 2–3 green-book-style probability / brain-teasers verbally and you work them on paper. Recurring: bus/movie uniform-arrival (5/24), HHT-before-HTH coin-pattern Markov, median of three U[0,3] in [1,2], obtuse triangle on a circle, the two-envelope problem.
3. Quant / Technical Phone
45–60 min · 1–2 rounds · videoHarder probability plus SIG's signature 5-dice mahjong-style game (winning hand = full house OR a run-plus-pair; given a starting hand, pick the best reroll to maximize your win probability / minimize expected rerolls — EV intuition over rigor). Often paired with an OLS / regression-efficiency derivation and an algorithm question (describe approach + complexity, usually no live coding).
4. Take-Home Data Task + Review (QR)
~1 week take-home · then ~2 hr virtual reviewGiven a real-ish dataset — a multi-trader trading ledger or a stock time-series — propose a maximum-return strategy. Expect ~20+ hours of work in any language, then a virtual review with two quants: one grills your data/EDA and assumptions, the other your strategy. They push you toward a strategic-interaction / game-theory framing rather than naive conditional distributions.
5. Market-Making Game + Poker
Interactive · with a traderSIG's games-as-interview round. You set a bid/ask spread on an uncertain value (e.g. true value in [40, 60], quote a width-4 market) and adjust as information arrives while a trader trades against you and asks you to explain every choice — plus the AKQ betting game and Acey-Deucy poker to probe EV and risk under uncertainty. Rehearse the exact muscle with the games below.
6. Onsite / Superday (Philadelphia)
Onsite · multiple 1-hr rounds + dinner + live pokerThe Bala Cynwyd onsite: a pre-dinner with a young trader/QR, building + data-center + trading-floor tours, several 1-hour quant rounds (open-ended estimation like noisy-angle estimation, 'estimate X given Z=X+Y normals', the AKQ game), a ~75-min data-discussion round (EV and expectation/variance trade-offs), and a live Acey-Deucy poker game. A team-game session sometimes appears. With a VO beforehand, the full loop can hit 8–11 rounds.
7. SWE / Quant-Dev Coding + Systems
Phone + onsite · C++ / algorithms / system designThe engineering funnel. After the CodeSignal OA, a C++ phone screen built around SIG's flagship 'implement std::vector' question (2× growth, allocation/reclaim, exception safety, type traits, ownership), then an onsite of pointers/polymorphism/virtual functions, a trade-book system design (price-level matching, treemap vs heap), and live C++ debugging.
Susquehanna (SIG) interview — FAQ
What is the Susquehanna (SIG) interview process?
SIG runs its hiring like a poker table: a recycled probability/logic Problem-Solving Assessment is sent BEFORE they read your resume, and the culture rewards expected-value thinking, game theory, and actual card games. The process is long (often 8–11 rounds over ~2 months) and famously flaky, but the bar is intuition and EV reasoning, not rote rigor. The loop runs 7 stages: Problem-Solving Assessment (OA), Technical HR / Recruiter Screen, Quant / Technical Phone, Take-Home Data Task + Review (QR), Market-Making Game + Poker, Onsite / Superday (Philadelphia), SWE / Quant-Dev Coding + Systems.
How many rounds does Susquehanna (SIG) have?
7 stages in total, starting with the Problem-Solving Assessment (OA) and ending with the SWE / Quant-Dev Coding + Systems.
How do I prepare for the Susquehanna (SIG) interview?
Work the stage notes above, then drill the Susquehanna (SIG) interview-questions set — each problem has a full worked solution.