C++ Software Engineer
Posted Sep 30, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026
Likely interview questions for this role
Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.
About your past
Tell me about a time you made production code much faster. What was the bottleneck?
What they are checking: Real optimization experience and how they found the true cause.
Tell me about a disagreement with a teammate on a design. How was it resolved?
What they are checking: Collaboration in a fast-paced team with rapid feedback across global teams.
What would you do
A hardware engineer changes a register layout. How do you keep the software in sync safely?
What they are checking: Collaboration with hardware teams and building safe interfaces between the two.
You need to add a new application to the trading infrastructure without disrupting existing systems. How do you plan it?
What they are checking: Whether they plan careful integration and rollout in a live trading environment.
About the work
How would you write C++ code that talks to an FPGA through memory-mapped registers?
What they are checking: Experience writing software that controls hardware, which this role focuses on.
What modern C++ features do you use in low-latency code, and which do you avoid?
What they are checking: Whether they know the real costs of language features in a hot path.
How do you measure latency in a production trading system without adding latency?
What they are checking: Practical skill with timestamps, sampling and low-overhead instrumentation.
How do you avoid false sharing between threads, and how would you detect it?
What they are checking: Understanding of CPU cache behavior that affects multithreaded performance.
What's kernel bypass networking, and when would you use it?
What they are checking: Knowledge of techniques common in low-latency trading systems.
How do you test code that depends on hardware you can't always access?
What they are checking: Their approach to simulation, mocking and testing hardware-dependent software.
Explain how you'd lay out a struct for a market data message to make processing fast.
What they are checking: Attention to memory layout, alignment and cache use in hot code paths.
Practice this interview out loud.
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Practice this out loudThe full job description
As published by IMC Trading.