Interviewing
at Jane Street
Prepare for your interview
We believe that asking great questions is more important than knowing all the answers.
We focus on collaborative problem solving during the interview and we consider applicants for every open role, not just the one you apply for. The structure for our interviews may vary by discipline and we’ve prepared information for a range of roles. Please select your discipline below to learn more.
Quantitative Trading
Problem-solving mindset: required.
Finance background: optional.
We’re looking for strong quantitative minds and collaborative team players to work in Quantitative Trading. We won’t test you on knowledge of finance or economics. Instead, we’ll try to get a sense of what it’s like to work with you to solve a problem.
Helpful Links
Quantitative Research
Part trader, part engineer, all encompassing
The work our researchers do overlaps both trading and software engineering, so the interview process is a mix of the two. Reading the guides for both of those departments will help you prepare.
Helpful Links
Software Engineering
Curious and disciplined engineers wanted.
We’ll work through some coding challenges during your interviews, and want you to be comfortable with your setup and tools of choice
Helpful Links
Business Development and Rotational Development Program
Up for any challenge, down to try any solution.
We’re looking for analytical, curious problem solvers who can help us make our existing processes more efficient and tackle new challenges that we haven’t thought about before.
Trading Desk Operations (TDO)
Help guide the flow of the trading and settlement cycle.
We seek specialists to manage the operational side of the trading desk’s activities, working with groups throughout the firm to ensure that all trades are reflected accurately in all systems
FAQs
Applying
Interview
Post interview
The short answer: We interview as many people from as many places as possible. The longer answer: We would love to interview everyone who applies, but we’re not a huge firm, so we can’t do that. We try to interview as many people as we can. We don’t have a GPA or degree requirement, and we hire students of all tenures from many different universities and concentrations. We had over 70 universities represented in last year’s global internship program.
Nope! If there’s something you think we should know about that doesn’t fit nicely onto your resume/CV, feel free to include it in the text box at the bottom of our application. If not, feel free to leave this blank.
Nope! But those with previous finance experience are of course welcome to apply.
We get a lot of requests like this. If we said yes to all of them, we wouldn’t have time to do our actual work. So unfortunately, no. Plus, most of us are already appropriately caffeinated.
Depending on your role and which office you’re in, this might vary a bit, but we work hard to provide a reasonable work-life balance. Most nights, things are pretty empty by about 6:30pm.
Jane Street is also a place that respects people’s time outside of the office. People here work incredibly hard during the day, but when they go home, they have the freedom to disconnect from work and focus on the rest of their lives.
This changes from office to office, and depending on the role. Check with your recruiter if you’re not sure whether we’ll sponsor for the position you’re considering.
When we receive an application, we consider it for all open roles globally. From there, we’ll try to eliminate roles that don’t seem like a great fit, and help you find the right home. It’s not uncommon for candidates to be considered for more than one team over the course of their interview process. Our goal is to help you figure out which role could be right for you.
We don’t typically have one; our applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. We do recommend applying as soon as possible, though.
Tell us! We can often work with you to expedite your interview process so that you know what all your options are and can make an informed decision.
For any interview processes not outlined above, it can be a bit more bespoke; in those cases, your recruiter can give you more information about what to expect.
Nope! You can interview in whichever language you know best, and in fact, we strongly encourage you not to try OCaml for the first time during the interview. Most of the software engineers we hire come in without any OCaml or even functional programming experience.
We don’t interview on the weekends (see the earlier point about work-life balance), but we are happy to talk to you during local business hours from Monday to Friday.
Yep! We’ll book everything for you and take care of your travel and hotel costs.
We’re a casual office, so many of us wear jeans and a t-shirt most days. If you’re coming from your current job, we understand you might be dressed a bit more formally. Either way, we won’t judge.
If we’re speaking to you on the phone, you should wait for our call. If you know you’ll have a poor connection or won’t have access to a phone, please let us know ahead of time, and we’ll coordinate your interview via WebEx or Skype.
If it’s 10-15 minutes ahead of your scheduled interview time, feel free to come to the office and get settled in. If you’re way ahead of schedule, you might want to consider grabbing a coffee nearby.
There is a lot of information on the internet—some true, some not. Don’t believe everything you read. If you’re curious about something you’ve heard, ask us about it! We’re here to help.
You should hear back from us within a week. We will follow up with you whether or not we’re moving forward with the process (no one likes to be left hanging), so if you haven’t heard by then, please follow up with your recruiter.
You can absolutely reinterview if it didn’t work out the first time. Plenty of people who currently work at Jane Street didn’t make it through our interview process their first time around. We usually recommend waiting to reapply for at least a year (in the case of current students), or until your experience or circumstances have significantly changed (in the case of experienced hires). This is not a hard and fast rule, but we think it’s a reasonable guideline.