Optiver Software Engineer Interview Questions
Practice the exact questions companies are asking right now.
Optimize flight and cargo bookings for profit
OptiCargo: make the booking algorithm profitable You are given two streams/lists: - Flights you may attempt to book. Each flight has: - flight_id ...
Answer why SWE and why Optiver
Behavioral questions (trading firm SWE intern) You are in behavioral interviews for a SWE internship at a high-frequency/prop trading firm. Prepare st...
Design low-latency trading infrastructure
System design: low-latency trading system with colocated box You are designing infrastructure for an electronic trading system. - You have a server/lo...
Design a queue and analyze tradeoffs
Design a FIFO queue data structure that supports enqueue, dequeue, peek, and isEmpty. Compare implementations using a singly linked list, a dynamic ar...
Plan for timed probability assessment
Timed Probability/Statistics Assessment Strategy (30 Questions, Strict Time Limit) Prompt You are taking a timed online assessment with 30 probability...
Design a topic-based news subscription system
Topic-Based News Subscription Service — Design and Implementation Context Build an in-memory service that manages subscribers and delivers relevant ne...
Design a balloon stability tracker
Implement a class BalloonFestival to manage hot-air balloons and wind fields over time, and to report rewarded balloons at inspection times. Methods a...
Design a satellite propagation simulator
Implement a SatelliteNetwork class to simulate message propagation over an undirected satellite graph. Provide these methods: ( 1) satellite_connected...
Solve quick probability questions
Rapid-Fire Probability Questions Context Answer the following independent probability questions. Assume fair dice/coin and a standard 52-card deck. Sh...
Find patterns in numeric sequences quickly
Pattern-Finding Number Sequences (No Calculator) In a fast technical screen, identify the next term for each sequence and briefly explain the rule you...
Solve numeric sequence pattern puzzles
Sequence Prediction Task You are given five independent number sequences. For each, determine the next term and briefly explain the rule you used. Ass...
Decide and implement DP/heap and approximation
You have 90 minutes to complete three related coding tasks: a) Dynamic programming: Given an integer array nums (n ≤ 2e 5) and a threshold T, design a...
Compute negative-price probability after n steps
Random-Walk Price Crossing Probability Setup - Initial price: S₀ = s (real number). - Step size: x > 0. - Number of days: n (integer ≥ 0). - Each day ...
Demonstrate task switching and memory strategies
Task-Switching and Working-Memory Exercise Context You will simulate a classic cognitive control task that requires rapid switching between two simple...
Implement price-based order matcher
Design and implement a price-based order matcher for unit-sized orders. You are given an array orders where each element is [type, price]: type = 1 de...
Compute permutations with repeated letters
Counting Strings with Repeated Characters Problem Given two nonnegative integers m and n, how many distinct strings can be formed that contain exactly...
Design and backtest a trading strategy
Minute-Level Mean-Reversion Strategy: Design, Backtest, Validation, and Significance Context You are given minute-level OHLCV data (open, high, low, c...
Compute expectations, conditionals, odds, and distributions
Fast Probability and Statistics (No Calculator) Context: Answer quickly with mental math and concise reasoning. Show set-up and any helpful shortcuts....
Introduce yourself and justify quant research fit
Behavioral Prompt: Self-Intro, Motivation, and High-Stakes Decision You are interviewing for a Software Engineer role in a quantitative trading resear...
Design dice betting strategy under time limit
Repeated Dice Betting with Time and Risk Constraints You have T = 10 minutes and an initial bankroll B = $1,000 to play a repeated betting game with a...