— GUIDE —
CITADEL SECURITIES TRADER INTERVIEW GUIDE
Citadel Securities publishes a fair amount about what it wants in a trader and very little about how the trading interview runs. This guide separates the two.
UPDATED 2026-09-08 · 7 MIN READ · BY THE VARIANCE TEAM
A firm can tell you a great deal about what it values and almost nothing about how it interviews. Both facts are useful, as long as you keep them apart.
Checked against Citadel Securities' careers site in September 2026. The firm publishes candidate FAQs for markets and trading, and separate write-ups of the interview process for engineering and quantitative research. It does not publish an equivalent stage-by-stage guide for trading. Any round-by-round account of a trading loop you find online is a candidate report, not the firm speaking.
What the firm actually says it wants
Their candidate FAQ for markets and trading is the most useful official source. It lists a quantitative degree background as preferred, along with systematic problem solving, an understanding of taking risk under uncertain conditions, programming and statistics, the ability to absorb new information and act on it quickly, and resilience.
Read that list again with an interviewer's eyes. Almost every item is something you can be tested on in conversation. "Acts quickly on new information" is what a market-making question measures when the interviewer trades against your quote and watches what you do next.
What to train
| Area | Why it maps to the stated criteria |
|---|---|
| Probability and expected value | Pricing uncertain outcomes is the core of risk taking under uncertainty |
| Mental arithmetic | Speed is what lets you reason rather than calculate when a question moves |
| Market making | Directly exercises quoting, inventory, and updating on new information |
| Statistics | Named explicitly in their technical skills list |
| Explaining your reasoning | Their stated culture is collaborative; a silent correct answer is a weak answer |
Expect to be asked about risk, not just math
A distinguishing feature of trader interviews at firms like this is that the arithmetic is often the easy part. The follow-up is where the evaluation happens: what would change your answer, how much would you size it, and what would you do if the market moved against you immediately.
Practice finishing every answer with the sentence you would say out loud. "My fair value is 62, I would quote 60 at 64, and I would widen if I learned the payoff depends on something I have not seen."
Representative practice questions
These are original representative questions, not Citadel Securities questions.
- A contract pays $100 if a fair coin shows heads twice in a row out of two flips. Price it and quote a market.
Fair value is
$100 × 1/4 = $25. A quote near 23 at 27 is defensible. Say why the spread is where it is. - You quote 40 at 44 and get lifted at 44 three times in a row. What now?
Treat the repetition as information. Reassess the fair value upward, reduce size, or widen. Explain the reasoning before naming a new number.
- A stock is equally likely to finish at 90 or 110. What is a fair price, and how does your answer change if you must hold to expiry?
Expected value is 100. Holding risk does not change the expectation, but it should change your size and the spread you demand.
- You have a strategy that has been profitable for twenty days straight. How much does that convince you?
Less than it feels. Ask about sample size, correlation between days, and whether the wins are small and the losses undiscovered. This is a resilience-and-skepticism question.
How to prepare
Work the underlying skills rather than a script for one firm. The market-making guide covers quoting and inventory, probability questions covers the math, and quant trader interview prep lays out the whole process end to end.
Source: Citadel Securities, Candidate FAQs: Markets & Trading, published November 2024, checked September 2026.