About Virtu Financial
Virtu Financial is a publicly traded electronic market maker headquartered in New York with offices in Austin, Dublin, and Singapore. Following its acquisitions of KCG and ITG, Virtu operates one of the largest market-making and execution-services franchises globally. Roles span quantitative trading, software engineering, low-latency systems, and execution algos.
For current openings see our Virtu listings.
Interview Process
- Online assessment: a timed quant + coding test, often via HackerRank
- Recruiter screen: background and motivation
- Technical phone screens: one to two rounds focused on probability and either coding or markets
- On-site / virtual super-day: four to five rounds covering math, coding, market intuition, and team fit
Probability and Mental Math
Expect classic interview probability — coin flips, dice, conditional probability — at a brisk pace. Virtu pushes mental math harder than most peers. Practice computing log returns, decimal-to-fraction conversions, percentage moves, and order-of-magnitude estimates without a calculator. Rounds often include a few rapid-fire arithmetic questions.
Market Microstructure
Because Virtu's edge is execution, microstructure questions appear earlier than at multistrategy firms. Be ready to discuss:
- Order types (limit, market, IOC, FOK, stop, hidden)
- Spread, midpoint, and price improvement
- Adverse selection and how it affects market makers
- The difference between maker and taker fees
- Why latency matters for both quoting and hedging
Coding Rounds
For trading roles, coding is usually Python and focuses on data manipulation — parsing trade tapes, computing rolling stats, simulating a simple strategy. For engineering roles, expect C++ at depth: memory layout, lock-free queues, perf-aware data structures, and Linux fundamentals.
Behavioral and Markets Conversation
A late-stage round usually involves a "tell me about a recent market event you found interesting" prompt. Don't recite headlines — explain the mechanics of what happened. Volatility regime shifts, ETF rebalances, and central-bank surprises are good topics if you can speak to second-order effects.
How to Prepare
- Drill mental math daily — Virtu's bar is higher than most
- Read about market microstructure (Larry Harris's Trading and Exchanges is the standard)
- For SWE roles, build something low-latency in C++ — even a simple in-memory order book matcher
- Follow recent SEC market structure rulings; they affect Virtu's economics directly
Browse our interview prep resources for problem sets and practice tools.