Two Sigma
Quantitative Researcher intern
Application
Bachelor's, master's and PhD students apply to the same role and sit the same loop; PhDs get their research domain in place of the statistics interview. There is no trading intern seat, so every quant applicant comes through research. Applications open in July and stay open into February and are read as they arrive, so apply early.
Online assessment
Web form · 105 min
A HackerRank research assessment in Python with pandas, to be started within a week: a linear interpolator, a pandas analysis of daily temperatures in New York and nearby towns that ends in choosing towns by forward selection, and a no-intercept regression that must update batch by batch. The tasks have been the same for years. Each test scores on its own.
Sit this round →Prep call
A recruiter call before the interviews that goes through the day: the three topics, their order and the video logistics. Every interview runs on one meeting link that the interviewers join in turn.
Interview day
Virtual interview · 2 × 60 min
Hour-long video interviews back to back. Data analysis comes first: one open-ended prediction problem talked through without code, followed up until time runs out, with a few questions that have a definite answer. Then coding with an engineer in a shared pad: two LeetCode easy-to-medium problems and their complexity. PhD candidates spend the first minutes of each interview on their research. Some candidates sit the data-analysis interview on its own, a week or two before the rest.
data analysisSit this round →codingSit this round →Early end
If the first interviews scored too low, the day ends before the statistics interview.
Interview day, third interview
Virtual interview · 60 min
Statistics derived out loud: the range of a common correlation and how to build one, covariances of order statistics, the two regression slopes, omitted-variable bias in matrix form, conditional normals. Classical statistics and linear models rather than machine learning. PhD candidates are asked about their research domain instead, usually with maths in it.
Sit this round →Hiring manager
Virtual interview · 60 min each
One to three hour-long conversations with managers interested in your background, plus a recruiter, often weeks after the interview day. Your past projects and how you work, in depth; a manager has to want you on the team.
Sit this round →Decision
A call from the recruiter. Interns are matched with a team and one project before the summer. If nothing arrives within a week of the last round, tell the recruiter about any competing deadline: it is the one thing that speeds the process up.
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.