I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Jane Street in Sept 2015
Interview
Applied online, got an email a few days later for a phone interview. Applied for the HK office, so got a phone call at night. Interview was fair, but I made some implementation mistakes and chose a hash table when a tree was a much better choice in the implementation. Unsurprisingly found they were looking for other candidates through email a few days later.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe how a hash table works. Design a street fighter game that displays a list of all combos given a button order. For example, if the user presses (->)AB, any move that activites on ->,A,B,->A,AB, or ->AB needs to be printed. Allow the user to define their own combos as well.
It was a very quick and painless process. Recruiter very responsive, kind interviewers. High implementation and difficult problems, so failed onsite after 3 interviews and a Question and Answer Session.
Did not pass the initial coding round. I tried to explain my thought in details to the interviewer but failed to translate my thought into code. So far interviewer is very nice.
Application
I applied online. I interviewed at Jane Street (New York, NY)
Interview
My experience interviewing at Jane Street was definitely challenging, but also surprisingly collaborative. Instead of focusing only on whether I could get the right answer quickly, the interviewers were much more interested in how I approached problems and explained my thinking. I worked through a few coding questions involving data structures and algorithms, and there were also some probability-style questions that tested logical reasoning. The interviewers were clearly very sharp, but they were also approachable and encouraged me to talk through my thought process the entire time. When I got stuck, they would sometimes guide me with small hints so we could keep exploring the problem together. Overall, it felt less like a typical high-pressure interview and more like a thoughtful technical conversation with experienced engineers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
“What is the expected number of coin flips needed to get two heads in a row?”