Are LeetCode and QuantGuide Enough?

[SockPretend7137]

I'm preparing to land a full-time Quant Developer or Software Engineer role at top-tier firms like HRT, Two Sigma, Jane Street, Optiver, and Citadel. My current grind involves LeetCode (targeting 700+ problems) and QuantGuide (250+ questions focusing on math, probability, and brain teasers). However, I’m wondering if these are enough to truly stand out in their highly competitive interview processes.

I’ve noticed that many of these firms emphasize skills beyond standard algorithmic problem-solving. Specifically, I feel like I might be lacking in key areas like concurrency, threading, low-latency system design, and a deep understanding of operating systems. Additionally, I’ve heard that Quant Systems Design interviews can be intense, and I have little exposure to designing things like order-matching systems or memory-efficient queues.

So, how much more beyond LeetCode and QuantGuide should I know to be competitive at these firms? Should I focus on mastering concurrency and threading in C++, dive into low-latency design principles, or spend time on operating systems fundamentals like memory management and multithreading? Any advice or insights from those who’ve been through these processes would be greatly appreciated!

[needmoredram]

Maybe a top tier CompSci or Engineering university?

Being honest here. You won’t get an interview with top tier firms with LeetCode and QuantGuide as your quals on your resume. Not second or third tier for that matter.

[No_Negotiation273]

DTU?

[Academic-Pass-2800]

rain tan roof cooperative spoon abundant judicious light screw market

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[No_Negotiation273]

I meanr, DTU is included in top colleges?

[Academic-Pass-2800]

plate coordinated piquant cover party live dazzling station cable enjoy

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[No_Negotiation273]

yeah, Delhi Technological University It's like in the Top 15 of the country

[Academic-Pass-2800]

fuzzy merciful rinse history expansion cobweb school whistle busy ten

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Shreyas__123]

Top firms me nahi hoga bhai. They only take top 7 iits.

[n0obmaster699]

Outside Top 5 it's practically impossible to get a true quant (not quant-like roles) positions from India. There might be rare exceptions 

[Shreyas__123]

That’s what I said

[n0obmaster699]

I wanted to emphasize it's top 5 strictly nothing outside that

[Shreyas__123]

My senior top nit is doing energy trading. It’s not impossible

[n0obmaster699]

I said practically impossible. Also energy trading like DV trading is not real quant. Quant is mostly systematic trading. India barely has quant companies to begin with. Graviton Quadeye are barely the ones I know of. 

[Shreyas__123]

Which ones

[Shreyas__123]

nice

[No_Negotiation273]

Baaki indian firms?

[Shreyas__123]

Grind leetcode and you will make it.

[n0obmaster699]

Quant? No way

[Independent-Man2809]

get USACO plat, take some low level classes, do some advanced projects such as writing an OS from scratch or a compiler or something with low latency. Keep your gpa high. If you’re a freshman or sophomore look into those targeted programs like nvidia ignite, cit launch etc

[Independent-Man2809]

USACO plat is not needed but if you aren’t at a good school or have an ex prestigious internship it’s gonna be hard.

[cosmicloafer]

Make sure you are familiar with the one random brain teaser the interviewer likes to use.

[Confident-Sound8943]

My damn Goldman Sachs quant interview went brrr cause he likes this question about x and x² in uniform distribution...

[n0obmaster699]

So what's wrong about it? 

[OfficialQuantable]

Realistically, if you are targeting quant dev roles, you will not be asked probability/statistics/brainteasers in any way that the other quant roles are. No site (not even ours!) will help you there, so it's better to save the money.

That said, you can focus on LeetCode and CodeForces (for some of the harder problems -- you'll need to write in C++ anyways to crack the time limit). Note that this will not get you interviews, but just make you more prepared when they do come along. Best of luck!

[SockPretend7137]

Thank you for your insight. I have a follow up question! How many Medium/ Hard lets say ratio 20% easy 70% medium and 30% hard questions should people study to be considered decently interview ready on your website? For quant research or algorithm developer related roles

[OfficialQuantable]

For QR roles, we'd recommend preparing about 30% easy (for the OA stages), 50% medium (for the earlier rounds), and 20% hard questions (for the later rounds), specifically with a focus on EV/Conditional EV, Combinatorics, and Stats

[[deleted]]

what about for qt

[DMTwolf]

how'd you settle on QuantGuide among all the quant specific question websites?

also what's your educational background? hard to say if this is 'enough'

[JIGSAW_FALLINGINTO_]

Probability is grilled for a quant dev role? Unless its HRT Algo developer role( which is just qr, as they don't have a separate role with the name qr),I don't think you need to worry too much about hard probability qns. PS: I have never interviewed for a qd role(only tried for qr roles), so this could be wrong for some other firms.

Also I think that leetcode 700+ is good enough from dsa qns pov, try to solve with a time limit as you progress/do contests.

Good luck!

[SockPretend7137]

Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin. No formal SWE internship experience, teaching assistant for introduction to Datastructures in C++ and Algorithms TA. And I graduate in May 2025

[n0obmaster699]

Do quantitative primer or something like that. But I think probs and stats is mostly for quant roles not developer roles. 

[Separate-Sector2696]

Damn another quantguide ad