Software Engineer Intern - Summer 2027

Walk me through a coding project you're proud of. What did you build, and what was the hardest technical decision you had to make?

whether the candidate can clearly explain technical depth and ownership of decisions, not just list technologies

Tell me about a time you had to work closely with someone else on code, maybe pair programming or a group project. How did you handle disagreements about approach?

fit for the team-based, holistic development approach the firm emphasizes

Tell me about a time you didn't know something and had to learn it fast to finish a project or assignment.

comfort with the steep learning curve of BTU and trading concepts with no finance background required

What draws you to trading and financial markets, even if you haven't studied finance formally?

genuine interest versus applying broadly without curiosity about the domain

Describe a bug that took you a long time to find. What was actually wrong, and how did you eventually track it down?

debugging persistence and method rather than luck

Say you're given a function that runs correctly but is too slow for a low-latency system. How would you go about figuring out where the time is going?

basic profiling instinct and understanding of what performance work actually looks like

Explain the difference between a process and a thread, and give an example of when you'd choose one over the other.

fundamentals needed for low-latency, concurrent trading systems

If you had to pick between an array and a linked list for a task that needs frequent lookups, which would you choose and why?

grasp of data structure tradeoffs relevant to performance-sensitive code

What happens in memory when you allocate an object versus a primitive, and why does that matter for performance?

understanding of memory layout and cost, key for high-performance C++ style systems

You're mid-project and you realize the design you chose two weeks ago won't scale to what's actually being asked. What do you do?

willingness to admit mistakes early and adapt rather than push forward stubbornly

How would you test a piece of code that's supposed to execute trades based on incoming market data, where a bug could actually lose money?

awareness of risk and rigor appropriate to trading software, not just academic coding habits

If a full-time engineer gave you a task with unclear requirements and was in meetings all day, what would you do next?

independence and judgment about when to make assumptions versus wait for clarification