Quantitative Research Intern (PhD) - Summer 2027
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 project where you had to analyze messy data. What did you find?
What they are checking: Rigor in data analysis and whether they question the data before trusting results.
Tell me about a problem you solved with a team where you disagreed on the approach.
What they are checking: Teamwork and how they resolve disagreements, which IMC says it rewards.
Which programming language do you use for analysis, and what's something you built with it?
What they are checking: Practical coding ability, since interns build analysis tools that may go into production.
Why quant research at a trading firm rather than in academia or tech?
What they are checking: Whether they understand the work and want it, since strong interns can earn a full-time offer.
What would you do
You find a pattern in trade data that looks profitable. What would make you doubt it?
What they are checking: Healthy skepticism about overfitting and bias, which separates a good researcher from a lucky one.
Your mentor gives you feedback that your analysis missed an obvious issue. How do you respond?
What they are checking: Coachability, since interns grow through a dedicated mentor and feedback.
About the work
A fair coin is flipped until heads appears. You win two to the power of the number of flips. What would you pay to play, and why?
What they are checking: Probability intuition and whether they notice when a naive expected value is not the whole answer.
What do you know about options, and what makes a call option worth more or less?
What they are checking: Starting knowledge of options theory, which the internship builds on in class.
What does a market maker do, and how do they make money?
What they are checking: Basic understanding of IMC's core business and the idea of earning a spread while managing risk.
How would you sort a list of a million numbers, and how would your answer change if they were mostly sorted already?
What they are checking: Grasp of algorithm complexity, which the posting lists as part of the internship learning.
Two numbers are picked uniformly between zero and one. What's the probability their sum is less than one?
What they are checking: Whether they can turn a probability question into a simple picture and solve it quickly under time pressure.
Practice this interview out loud.
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Practice this out loudThe full job description
As published by IMC Trading.