The Susquehanna Interview Process and Its Poker Rounds

Susquehanna's flagship round teaches candidates an unfamiliar game on the spot and grades the decision process behind each bet, not the outcome.

Susquehanna International Group's interview process is built around decision-making under uncertainty rather than static math tests, and its signature round teaches candidates an unfamiliar game on the spot and evaluates how quickly they adapt strategy as new information appears, a format the firm borrows directly from its internal poker-based training.

Susquehanna International Group, known widely as SIG, is an options market maker with a long-standing internal culture built around decision science, the study of how to make good choices under incomplete information. The firm has historically used poker as an internal training tool because the game rewards updating a strategy as new cards and opponent behavior reveal information, which mirrors how an options market maker has to revise a quote as order flow and volatility shift.

That culture shapes the interview directly. Rather than testing whether a candidate already knows finance terminology, SIG tests whether a candidate can learn a new set of rules quickly and make consistently good decisions inside them, treating the interview itself as a small decision-making exercise.

Candidates typically begin with an online assessment covering probability, logic and quantitative reasoning, followed by a first round of interviews focused on brainteasers and expected value questions. Candidates who advance are invited to a final round, often a half-day or full-day session, that includes one or more decision-making games alongside further technical and behavioral conversations.

The decision-making game is the round most candidates remember most vividly. An interviewer explains a simplified game with its own rules, sometimes resembling a card game and sometimes an abstract betting scenario, and the candidate must play several rounds while thinking out loud about strategy.