Graduate Deep Learning Researcher - Chicago, New York
Posted Oct 1, 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 the research project you're proudest of. What was your specific contribution?
What they are checking: Real depth in their own work and honesty about what they personally did.
You have no finance background. How would you get up to speed on markets quickly?
What they are checking: Drive to learn and a realistic plan, since prior finance experience is not required.
Tell me about a paper you read recently that changed how you think about a problem.
What they are checking: Whether they keep up with the field and engage with ideas critically.
What would you do
A senior researcher suggests an approach you think is wrong. How do you raise it?
What they are checking: Whether they can disagree respectfully and with evidence while still learning from experienced people.
About the work
Explain how self-attention works to someone who knows linear algebra but not transformers.
What they are checking: Clear understanding of core architecture, not just the ability to use a library.
Markets have very low signal-to-noise. How would that change how you train a large model compared to language data?
What they are checking: Whether they can transfer deep learning knowledge to a domain where overfitting is the main danger.
What is self-supervised learning, and how might you use it on market data without labels?
What they are checking: Understanding of representation learning, which the posting names as a focus area.
Your model trains well but validation loss is flat from the start. What do you check?
What they are checking: Practical debugging habits for deep learning, such as data leakage, bugs and learning rate.
How do you decide whether a result is real or just one lucky random seed?
What they are checking: Scientific rigor, which the team explicitly values over flashy results.
How would you curate a large dataset so that a foundation model learns something useful instead of junk?
What they are checking: Awareness that data quality and curation matter as much as architecture at scale.
Practice this interview out loud.
Offer builds a real interview for this exact role at IMC Trading from your resume and this job description, asks the questions one at a time, and tells you what landed. The first one is free.
Practice this out loudThe full job description
As published by IMC Trading.