Optiver Quantitative Research Internship Phone Screen Experience
Interview Experience
I'd heard Optiver was a big name in the quant field, so two weeks ago I randomly applied for a Quantitative Research Intern position. About two days later, I received an online assessment (OA). After
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I'd heard Optiver was a big name in the quant field, so two weeks ago I randomly applied for a Quantitative Research Intern position. About two days later, I received an online assessment (OA). After glancing at the questions, I realized my core skills didn't match Optiver's requirements at all, so I decided not to bother. Surprisingly, after the OA expired, their HR emailed me, jokingly asking why I hadn't taken it. I jokingly replied, "Oh, I've had too many interviews lately, I just couldn't keep up." Then, in a very casual tone, the HR sent me an interview invitation... So, I went for the first round, which, like many interview experiences described, involved a gambling game, with n rounds. Each round had the following conditions: Three coin tosses: H>T; T>H; HTH or THT; HHH or TTT Two dice rolls: SUM = 2 or 3; SUM = 4; SUM = 10; SUM = 11 or 12; SUM is odd. SUM is even. Draw three playing cards. The product of the first two cards is greater than 20; greater than 100; odd; even. There's also a market where you bid on the sum of the three cards. Prices fluctuate, and you can buy or sell. If you buy below the actual sum or sell above, you win; otherwise, you lose. The odds and scenarios are randomly generated and change every round. You need to quickly calculate in your head whether it's worth betting. After calculating, deciding how to bet requires an intuition about numbers/gambling/market fluctuations. I later asked the interviewer why he asked such questions, and he replied that Optiver wanted to find people who could quickly identify market opportunities under pressure. During the interview, I felt I could roughly calculate which scenarios were worth betting on, but I had no idea how to allocate my investment. In the end, I lost 1000 and only had 500 left. The interviewer spoke incredibly fast, and his facial expression throughout looked like he was looking at an idiot. I was definitely going to fail, haha.
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This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Optiver. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Optiver are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Optiver interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Optiver reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Optiver Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Optiver reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.