The Tower Research Capital Interview Process

Tower Research Capital's process centers on a coding and math screen before any live trading discussion, with system design carrying real weight.

Tower Research Capital moves candidates through an online coding and mathematics screen, two to three rounds of technical interviews, and a final onsite or virtual superday that mixes coding, probability, and behavioral conversations. The firm has run this general structure for both trading and engineering seats since its founding in 1998, adjusting the technical depth to the role but keeping the same overall shape. Tower Research Capital built its business on low-latency trading across futures, equities, options, and currencies, and its interviews are built to confirm that a candidate can reason correctly and quickly under the kind of pressure that infrastructure creates.

Tower Research Capital trades a wide range of listed products, including futures, equities, options, and foreign exchange, across exchanges in North America, Europe, and Asia. The firm's edge has historically come from proprietary low-latency infrastructure, including custom network hardware and colocated servers, combined with statistical and algorithmic strategies developed by internal research teams.

Because the firm operates across so many venues and asset classes, quantitative researchers and software engineers at Tower typically specialize by strategy group rather than by exchange, and the interview process is designed to route candidates toward the group whose problems match their background, whether that is market making, statistical arbitrage, or the infrastructure that supports both.

The process usually opens with an online assessment covering coding problems and probability or mental math questions, timed and completed independently. Candidates who pass are typically scheduled for one or two technical phone interviews that go deeper into the same areas, with software engineers facing more algorithmic and system design content and trading or research candidates facing more probability, statistics, and market-based case questions.

A final superday, run either in person or over video, strings together three to five interviews in a single day. These usually include a coding round, a probability or brainteaser round, a conversation about a past project or research piece, and at least one session focused on culture fit and motivation for working at a firm with Tower's specific focus on infrastructure and speed.