How Top Quant Firms Recruit Talent

Two Sigma, Citadel, DE Shaw, and Jane Street are the most sought-after employers in quantitative finance. Here's how they recruit — and how AlphaNova competitions can give you an edge.

The Hiring Pipeline

Two Sigma

• Focus: Research depth, intellectual curiosity
• Process: Phone screen → take-home modeling project → on-site (4-5 interviews)
• What they look for: PhD-level statistics, unique research ideas, Python/C++ fluency

Citadel / Citadel Securities

• Focus: Speed, precision, competitive drive
• Process: HackerRank → phone interview → Super Day (6-8 interviews)
• What they look for: Probability puzzles, brain teasers, market microstructure knowledge

DE Shaw

• Focus: Cross-disciplinary thinking
• Process: Resume screen → phone → on-site with multiple teams
• What they look for: Non-traditional backgrounds (physics, CS, biology) applying quantitative methods

Jane Street

• Focus: Trading intuition, probability theory
• Process: Phone screen → mock trading game → on-site with trading simulation
• What they look for: Expected value thinking, real-time decision making under uncertainty

How AlphaNova Helps

Competition performance is increasingly used as a hiring signal by quant firms:

Verifiable track record — Your Sharpe ratio on unseen data can't be faked

Code quality — Firms review your submission code for engineering standards

Consistency — Top 10% across multiple competitions > #1 in one competition

Novel approaches — Unique strategies demonstrate research ability

The Numbers

Based on our 2026 hiring survey:

• 73% of quant firms accept competition results in applications
• 42% have hired directly from competition leaderboards
• Top 5% AlphaNova performers receive direct recruiter outreach

Get Started

The best time to build a competition track record was a year ago. The second best time is now.

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