Quantitative Trader applicants have rated the interview process at Jane Street with 3.6 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 75% positive. To compare, the company-average is 63.8% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Quantitative Trader roles take an average of 19 days to get hired, when considering 143 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Jane Street overall takes an average of 17 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Jane Street as a Quantitative Trader according to 143 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 38%
Skills test: 19%
One on one interview: 17%
Presentation: 6%
IQ intelligence test: 5%
Personality test: 5%
Group panel interview: 4%
Other: 3%
Drug test: 2%
Background check: 1%
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I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Jane Street (London, England) in May 2022
Interview
Did technical interviews. The interviews are ~30 mins and consist of standard logic/maths questions that get progressively harder.
To prepare, I suggest reading the Jane Street Interview Guide on their website, solve problems from them on glassdoor and sharpen your mental arithmetic and basic probability maths skills.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Q1: What is the smallest number whose digits multiply into 216. What about 10,000?
Q2: Calculate the probability of getting 3 heads after 4 coin flips. What is the probability of getting an odd number of heads for 4 flips? What about for 9? What about for N flips?
Q3: What is the next date whose digits are all unique?
Q4: Getting heads-tails-heads and heads-heads-tails are equiprobable after 3 coin flips. But if I keep flipping a coin, I'm more likely to get one of these combinations than the other. Why is that?
The interviewer was very informative. The questions appeared basic initially, but they required deeper reasoning, strong fundamental knowledge, and careful problem-solving instead of simple, straightforward answers throughout the interview process.
The process was structured and intellectually challenging. It typically involves an initial recruiter screen, followed by probability, mental math, expected value, and game-style problem-solving interviews. Interviewers focus more on reasoning, communication, and adapting to feedback than memorized answers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have two opaque boxes in front of you. At each turn, you may choose one of two actions:
Place: put one coin into one of the two boxes, chosen uniformly at random.
Take: choose one of the two boxes uniformly at random, take all the coins inside, and empty that box.
You play for exactly 100 turns. Your goal is to maximize the expected number of coins you collect.
What is your optimal strategy?
Several phone calls to go to the final round. The phone calls consists of mathematical, probabilistic brain teasers which was not that hard for a mathematics major. Final round was to harsh for me, strong mentality is required