Citadel

1. Application

   There is no online assessment for research. One application is passed around the research teams (Global Quantitative Strategies, Equity Quantitative Research, Fixed Income & Macro, Credit, Data Strategies), and each team that wants you runs its own interviews, so you can be in three loops at once, often with a Citadel Securities team as well. A recruiter call comes first and decides nothing: your CV goes back out to the teams after it. A rejection from one team is recorded for all of them.

2. First round

   Virtual interview · 45 min

   A video call with a researcher from the team, with a shared code pad open. Up to half of it is your CV, followed up in detail; then one or two probability or regression questions and a short coding task, most often maximum drawdown or a small simulation. An unsolved follow-up does not sink you if you got there with a nudge.

   Sit this round →

3. Team interviews

   Virtual interview · 3 × 30–45 min

   Two or three more interviews with the same team, booked together as hour slots that end early: a researcher on regression and correlation, a senior researcher on short probability problems, and a quantitative developer on coding. Every one opens on your CV. Global Quantitative Strategies splits these into a second round and then an onsite, in person in New York in some years.

   statisticsSit this round →

   probabilitySit this round →

   codingSit this round →

4. Final round

   Virtual interview · ~30 min

   The team's head of research, sometimes with a separate half hour with a senior recruiter. Not technical: motivation, how you work, which markets interest you. Candidates who cleared every technical interview are turned down here.

   Sit this round →

5. Leadership review

   Recruiting asks for your top five accomplishments in writing, and the firm's leadership reviews the list with the interview notes before an offer is made. The offer is for the team that interviewed you; there is no matching afterwards.

Reconstructed from first-hand candidate reports and the firm's own published material. Problems in this track are original and format-faithful; nothing is copied from a live interview.