The Graviton Research Capital Interview Process

Graviton hires heavily from IITs on India's placement calendar, where an offer can arrive on interview day itself, a pace unfamiliar to European candidates.

Graviton Research Capital runs algorithmic and derivatives trading desks out of London and Gurugram, India, and the two offices hire on distinctly different calendars: London follows a graduate scheme timeline similar to other UK systematic firms, while the Gurugram office recruits heavily through India's campus placement season, where an offer can be extended on the same day as the final interview, a pace that surprises candidates used to the multi-week decision windows common in Europe and the US.

Graviton's India office draws a large share of its hires from the Indian Institutes of Technology, particularly IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur, through the formal campus placement process that Indian engineering institutes run each year, typically concentrated between December and February for final-year students. This process is compressed relative to European graduate recruiting: a firm registers for a placement slot, interviews a shortlist of students across a single day or two, and extends offers within hours rather than weeks, which means a candidate who has not prepared before placement season begins has effectively missed the window for that cycle.

The London office, by contrast, runs a more familiar multi-week process spread across several months, closer in shape to the other UK firms covered in this series, and candidates should not assume the compressed India timeline applies if they are applying to the London desk specifically.

Graviton's India interviews lean heavily on data structures, algorithms and low-latency systems knowledge alongside probability and mental arithmetic, reflecting the firm's focus on high-frequency and algorithmic execution strategies. Candidates report multiple rounds of live coding, often on a shared screen or a coding platform rather than a whiteboard, testing both correctness and an awareness of time and space complexity under realistic constraints.

Probability and quantitative aptitude rounds resemble what appears across the interview questions bank, and candidates who have drilled timed problem sets on practice generally perform better on the arithmetic-under-pressure component that Graviton, like most latency-sensitive trading firms, tests directly.