Quantitative Researcher – Futures
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 signal you built that worked in research but failed live. What did you learn?
What they are checking: Honest experience with the research-to-production gap and how they adapt.
Tell me about a time you had to defend your research to skeptical colleagues.
What they are checking: Whether they can communicate and stand behind rigorous work while staying open to challenge.
What would you do
A live strategy's performance slowly decays. How do you tell if it's noise or the signal dying?
What they are checking: Their approach to monitoring and refining existing strategies with statistical care.
How would you work with developers to build a research framework that gets ideas to production faster?
What they are checking: Whether they can help build shared infrastructure, which the posting calls essential.
About the work
Walk me through how you'd research a new intraday signal for futures, from idea to deciding it's worth trading.
What they are checking: A full, rigorous research process from hypothesis to validated alpha.
How do you handle the roll and contract changes when building a continuous futures dataset?
What they are checking: Practical futures data knowledge that can quietly break a backtest if handled wrong.
How do you guard against overfitting when you're testing many features on high-frequency data?
What they are checking: Discipline around multiple testing, validation and the low signal in market data.
How would you use information from the options market to forecast moves in the underlying futures?
What they are checking: Whether they see how IMC's options expertise could add edge to futures strategies.
Which machine learning methods have worked for you on noisy financial data, and which haven't?
What they are checking: Practical judgment about modern ML in a low signal to noise setting.
How would you combine several weak signals into one forecast?
What they are checking: Understanding of signal combination, correlation between signals and stability over time.
How do you account for transaction costs and market impact when evaluating an intraday futures strategy?
What they are checking: Whether their backtests reflect real execution costs instead of idealized fills.
Practice this interview out loud.
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Practice this out loudThe full job description
As published by IMC Trading.