interviewing at citadel in three weeks for a senior SWE role. wanted to start a real data thread since a lot of what's online is a few years old or super vague.
if you've been through the loop recently (2024 or 2025), what did you see? specifically: which rounds got added or dropped compared to older posts? how hard was the quant/math component actually? did they ask anything behavioral beyond "why citadel"? what was the systems design angle: distributed systems, low-latency, something else?
any data points appreciated. i've got a FAANG background so my systems design reps are mostly scale/throughput, not latency-sensitive. trying to figure out how much to shift my prep.
4 replies
ds_dmitri
did a quant research adjacent role loop in late 2024. for me it was: two coding rounds (one graph problem, one dynamic programming), one stats/probability round, one "case" round that was basically: here's a messy dataset concept, how do you think about modeling it. no traditional behavioral. one culture fit round that was more like a conversation about how you think about tradeoffs.
the culture fit round actually mattered. they wanted to see if you'd push back thoughtfully or just agree with the interviewer.
market_realist
really useful. the "push back thoughtfully" thing is interesting, i'll keep that in mind. sounds like being intellectually opinionated is a plus not a risk.
backend_bekah
for senior SWE specifically: the systems design round i had was definitely latency-first, not scale-first. think: you're building a component that sits in the critical path of a trade. what do you optimize first and how do you measure it. if you've worked with queuing systems, memory-mapped I/O, or any kind of hardware-aware software you can draw on that. if not, spend a few hours reading about CPU cache effects and why they matter.
sec_sasha
fwiw the behavioral at citadel is genuinely lighter than most places. "why citadel" and "tell me about a technically hard problem you've worked on" cover probably 80% of what gets asked. the hard problem one is worth prepping in detail, they'll go deep on the technical choices.