The DRW Interview Process for Traders and Developers

DRW splits its process into separate trading and developer tracks after a shared quantitative screen, since the firm trades a diversified book.

DRW runs separate interview tracks for trading and technology roles, but both share an early quantitative screen, since the firm trades a diversified book across futures, options, fixed income, equities and digital assets rather than specializing in one product the way many of its peers do.

DRW is a diversified proprietary trading firm active in futures, options, fixed income, equities and, through its Cumberland subsidiary, digital assets, with strategies ranging from market making to longer-horizon systematic trading. That diversification means DRW hires both traders, who work more directly with pricing and risk on a specific desk, and software developers, who build the trading infrastructure and tools those desks depend on, and the two tracks diverge significantly after an initial quantitative screen.

A trading candidate at DRW should expect the process to lean toward probability, market intuition and risk reasoning, while a developer candidate should expect a process closer to a standard software engineering interview, with coding and systems questions replacing much of the market-specific material.

Trading candidates typically start with a recruiter screen and an online assessment covering probability and quantitative reasoning, followed by one or two interviews with traders from the desk that is hiring. A final round or superday stacks several interviews together, often including a market-making or risk-management scenario alongside behavioral questions about decision-making under pressure.

Developer candidates generally follow a parallel structure but with coding assessments and system design interviews substituted for the market-making scenarios, though DRW frequently includes at least one interview testing basic quantitative reasoning even for developer roles, since engineers work closely with trading desks and need enough fluency to communicate with them.