I applied through university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Jane Street in Feb 2013
Interview
Applied thru school career page. First interview one-on-one on campus. That I passed and got a phone interview scheduled. They didn't call em on time and asked to reschedule and I did. Then I passes this phone interview. Scheduled a new phone interview which I failed. Questions are not that difficult in those stages. Take a look at "A Practical Guide Quantitative Finance Interviews" by Xinfeng Zhou. It helped with a couple of questions as they were similar or identical.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How long would a tunnel from NYC to San Fran. would be if you dig it through the earth as short as possible? If you traveled directly on the surface? What is you confidence bound (length +/-)?
You are waiting for a bus which it takes a round trip of 10 minutes to complete (starts again when it completes one tour). What is your expected waiting time if you arrive at a random time? (uniform from 0 to 10, so 5min). Then, an extension: There is an ice cream shop somewhere on the bus route. The bus driver flips a fair coin every time it passes by it and f "H", spends 10 minutes to eat ice cream and then continue the tour. What is your expected waiting time now? What is the coin is biased?
The process was structured and intellectually challenging. It typically involves an initial recruiter screen, followed by probability, mental math, expected value, and game-style problem-solving interviews. Interviewers focus more on reasoning, communication, and adapting to feedback than memorized answers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have two opaque boxes in front of you. At each turn, you may choose one of two actions:
Place: put one coin into one of the two boxes, chosen uniformly at random.
Take: choose one of the two boxes uniformly at random, take all the coins inside, and empty that box.
You play for exactly 100 turns. Your goal is to maximize the expected number of coins you collect.
What is your optimal strategy?
Several phone calls to go to the final round. The phone calls consists of mathematical, probabilistic brain teasers which was not that hard for a mathematics major. Final round was to harsh for me, strong mentality is required
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Jane Street (New York, NY) in Apr 2026
Interview
Lots of expectation/probability questions. Make sure to study game-theory type question that involves expectations. Specific concepts in stochastic processes don't seem that important. The first two were relatively easy. Just make sure to ask a question if there is any uncertainty