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PRACTICE GUIDE   IMC TRADING

IMC Trading Quant Developer Practice Test

IMC Trading does not publish the shape of its quant developer screen, and candidates describe it as 2 to 4 problems questions in 60 to 120 minutes, roughly 20 to 40 minutes per question, written in a code editor and run against tests you cannot see.

Those are ranges across firms running this format rather than IMC Trading's own figures, so treat them as the shape to train against and check the instruction screen on the day for the marking rule.

Outcry is not affiliated with IMC Trading and has no access to their assessment content. This guide describes an assessment format that candidates report publicly; the questions here are generated by Outcry and are not IMC Trading’s own.

What it screens

A market maker founded in Amsterdam, trading on exchanges worldwide with desks in Chicago, Sydney and Mumbai.

  • ✓Reading concurrent code and pointing at the defective line
  • ✓Order-book data structures: what happens on a cross, a cancel, a partial fill
  • ✓Algorithmic complexity chosen for the input sizes stated in the problem
  • ✓Monte Carlo methods and when a simulation beats a closed form

Where it sits at IMC Trading

A market maker founded in Amsterdam, trading on exchanges worldwide with desks in Chicago, Sydney and Mumbai. What that means for the screen is that the questions tend to be drawn from the work rather than from a textbook, so the format below is the shape to train against rather than a syllabus.

Candidates also report 4 other screens at IMC Trading, covered separately on this site. Where a firm runs several, they usually sit in one round rather than spread across the process, so the pacing of the whole set matters more than any single section.

The format

IMC Trading does not publish this screen's shape, and it varies between firms, so these are the ranges candidates report rather than exact figures.

Questions2 to 4 problems
Time60 to 120 minutes
Per question20 to 40 minutes
Negative markingNo
Answer styleCode editor, run against hidden tests
Where it sitsFirst technical round, usually on HackerRank or CoderPad

What it tests, with a worked example

Every example below is generated by Outcry, drawn from the same question generators the timed drills run. None of them is IMC Trading’s.

Data structure implementation

Build the thing rather than call it: an order book, a cache, a ring buffer. Graded by hidden tests, so there is no partial credit for an approach.

Complexity that is actually graded

Hidden tests sized so the naive solution times out. A correct answer that is too slow scores the same as a wrong one.

Reading someone else's code

A diff or a function with a bug in it, and the question is where.

Example

You need the running median of a live price stream. Which approach is best?

  • Two heaps - a max-heap of the low half and a min-heap of the high half
  • Sort the buffer on every tick
  • A single min-heap
  • A hash map of counts

Answer Two heaps - a max-heap of the low half and a min-heap of the high half

Balanced heaps give O(log n) insert and O(1) median. Re-sorting is O(n log n) per tick.

Numerical and data handling

Floating point, aggregation and joins on data that does not fit the obvious shape.

Example

A price walks on the whole numbers 0 to N.
Each step it moves +1 with probability p and -1 with probability 1 - p, independently.
It stops the first time it touches 0 or N.

N = 8     start = 4     p = 0.6

One question, six parts. Each part uses the part before it.

Part 2 of 6. Still p = 0.5. What is the expected number of steps before the walk stops?

Answer 16

The expected duration is start x (N - start) = 4 x 4 = 16. Check it: the function start x (N - start) is 0 at both barriers and drops by exactly 1 per step in expectation, which is what "one step has passed" means.

Edge cases

Empty input, one element, duplicates and overflow. The hidden tests always include them.

Probability behind the problem

Screens that look like coding questions and are really expectation questions.

Example

What is the limit of (e^(3x) - 1 - 3x) / x^2 as x approaches 0?

  • 1.50
  • 6.00
  • 4.50
  • 9.00

Answer 4.50

Expand the exponential: e^(3x) = 1 + 3x + 9x^2/2 + ..., so the numerator is 9x^2/2 plus higher order terms. Dividing by x^2 leaves 9/2 = 4.50. Two rounds of l'Hopital give the same thing.

What a good score looks like

Coding screens are usually pass-fail on hidden tests rather than scored, and candidates commonly report that a solution passing every correctness test still fails on a timeout. Treat full marks as solving every problem inside the complexity bound, not merely solving it.

How to train for it

  1. 01Implement the core structures from scratch once each. The screens ask you to build them, not use them.
  2. 02Write the edge cases into your own tests first. That is where the hidden ones live.
  3. 03Practise without an autocomplete. The screens run in a bare editor, and the gap between writing code with help and without it is larger than most people expect.

TRAIN IT HERE

The drills that match each section

QUANT DEVELOPERFREE RUN

Concurrency Clash

Find the data race, name the fix - real C++ defect patterns, five levels.

QUANT DEVELOPERFREE RUN

Order Book

Matching-engine mechanics: crosses, cancels and partial fills.

QUANT DEVELOPERFREE RUN

Algorithm Lab

DP tables, Monte Carlo estimation and speed rounds at four difficulty tiers.

SIT THE FULL BATTERY

All the sections back to back on one clock, marked the way the real screen marks them, with a by-skill breakdown at the end. Included with any pass.

MOCK SCREENS

Also reported at IMC Trading

Common questions

Is the IMC Trading quant developer test multiple choice?
Reported as code editor, run against hidden tests. Formats move, so treat this as the shape rather than a guarantee.
How long is the IMC Trading quant developer test?
Candidates report 2 to 4 problems questions in 60 to 120 minutes, roughly 20 to 40 minutes per question.
Is there negative marking on the IMC Trading quant developer test?
No. A wrong answer costs nothing beyond the mark you would have earned, so leaving an item blank is never better than guessing at it.
How do I practise for it free?
Every drill linked on this page is free to play, with no account, inside a daily run cap. Questions are generated fresh each run, so there is nothing to memorise between attempts.

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