Citadel recruits software engineers in India primarily through campus drives at IITs and through their global intern pipeline, with full-time hires joining teams in their global offices.
About Citadel
Citadel (Citadel LLC) is the world's most profitable hedge fund, founded by Ken Griffin. The Hyderabad quantitative engineering team works on global trading infrastructure, market microstructure research, and systematic strategy development.
Campus or referral screen: targets IIT Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur, and top NITs
Online Assessment: 2 to 3 hard DSA problems, sometimes with a probability puzzle, 90 to 120 minutes
Technical Round 1: Hard algorithmic problem with emphasis on low-level performance reasoning
Technical Round 2: System or low-level design, concurrency, or C++ internals
Probability or Domain Round: expected value, market microstructure, or quantitative reasoning
Final Round with Senior Engineer or Team Lead: technical depth and culture alignment
Online Assessment (90 to 120 min)
2 to 3 hard DSA problems. A probability puzzle is sometimes included. Partial credit is rare; complete solutions are expected.
Technical Round 1 (60 min)
A hard algorithmic problem in C++ or Python. Interviewers probe cache behaviour, memory layout, and runtime constants beyond Big-O.
Technical Round 2 (60 min)
Low-level design or concurrency. You may be asked to design a lock-free queue, a rate limiter, or a market-data order book in C++.
Probability or Domain Round (45 min)
Expected-value problems, conditional probability, or basic market-microstructure reasoning. This round filters out pure CS candidates who lack quantitative intuition.
Final Round (45 min)
Conducted by a senior engineer or team lead. Covers technical depth, past projects, and alignment with Citadel's high-performance culture.
Sourced from 2+ candidate post-mortems. Hit Practice to answer any one with AI voice feedback.
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