IMC Launchpad: The Complete Interview Guide

An invitation-based programme run out of IMC's regional hubs, Chicago in the US and Amsterdam in Europe, plus editions in Sydney and India, typically over 2 to 3 days. Cohorts are small, usually around 60 participants split into 2 groups, with roughly as many full-time IMC traders, engineers and quant researchers on hand throughout.

It targets students roughly 2 years from graduating, so you can slot into a penultimate-year internship the following summer. The 2026 US programme targeted students eligible for a Summer 2027 Quant Trading Internship; the 2026 Sydney programme targets students interested in the 2027 and 2028 internships.

IMC is looking for:

• Second-year students interested in quantitative trading or software engineering
• Quantitative and CS-leaning backgrounds: mathematics, statistics, physics, engineering, econometrics, actuarial science, computer science or equivalent
• Genuine interest in markets, with no prior finance experience needed. Familiarity with Python, R or Matlab is an advantage rather than a requirement
• Problem solvers who work well in a fast, collaborative setting

Launchpad follows IMC's early-stage funnel rather than the full trading interview.

1. Application. Submit to the specific Launchpad role for your region. Lead with technical skills, programming, quantitative coursework, competitions and projects that show analytical ability.
2. Online assessment. Most quant and trading-track applicants get one. IMC commonly uses cognitive and aptitude-style testing here, so prepare as you would for the full Graduate Trader process.
3. Screening or interview. Depending on region and volume, a short recruiter conversation or video screen on motivation and fit.

Because Launchpad feeds the internship pipeline directly, a well-targeted resume and a clean assessment are what get you through the door. Practise cognitive games and aptitude-style numerical and diagrammatic reasoning, and drill mental arithmetic on the Math Trainer so speed is not the limiting factor.

Orientation and exposure.

• Welcome and introduction, usually with an office tour.
• Interactive presentations and games explaining what IMC does and how trading and technology fit together, delivered interactively rather than as slide decks.
• Role insight into the trading and tech career paths, including how quant traders and engineers work together day to day.
• Networking, with structured time to meet employees and other students. Many participants are assigned a buddy, a current employee available for questions throughout.

Day 1 is lower stakes on paper but still observed. Curiosity, good questions and how you engage with both peers and professionals all register.

Where your aptitude becomes visible.

• Trading and technology deep dives, plus an introduction to the internship and the project work interns actually do.
• Workshops on technical and analytical skills.
• Mock trading simulations. Manual and algorithmic trading simulations and market making games, sometimes with poker-style or game-theory exercises depending on region. This is the core of the day.
• Desk shadowing, region dependent, watching a trader's screen in real time to see what they monitor and how they allocate attention.

The market making simulations are the single most important thing to prepare, because that is where your trading instincts, numeracy and composure are all on display at once. Read our guide to make me a market and practise on the market games beforehand.

Mumbai runs the most interview-heavy version: a formal online assessment followed by 4 interview rounds. Other editions lean toward simulations and networking, so treat this as a guide to the technical depth you face in Mumbai rather than a universal script. What is consistent everywhere is the underlying skill set: probability, expected value, estimation, market making, and defending your reasoning under follow-up questioning.

The funnel runs CV shortlist, then online assessment, then 4 interview rounds, with no further filtering between the CV screen and the assessment. Interviews are on Zoom, roughly 4 days apart, with about a month between the assessment and round 1. For scale, around 50 to 70 people reach the first interview, around 25 make it into Launchpad, and roughly half of each track receive a return internship offer.

The online assessment

Doing exceptionally well in either coding or quant puzzles, combined with solid overall performance, is what advances candidates. Drill the brainteaser database for the puzzles and the Sequence Trainer for the last two sections.

The interview rounds

A theme runs through all four: communication and thought process matter more than the exact final answer, and candidates advance on clear reasoning even without reaching a precise number.

Round 1: probability and expected value

Expected-value puzzles. One reported example is a sequential-decision dice game: you and an opponent each roll a fair die, you see only your own roll, and you either keep it, with P&L equal to your roll minus the opponent's, or skip once for a fixed fee. Follow-ups add a restart-on-tie rule and tie the logic back to a coin-toss game with a re-toss on tails, which is a geometric series in disguise.

Another is a random walk on the faces of a cube: the probability an ant sits on a lateral face after n steps, and how the three face probabilities behave as n grows, which is a Markov chain reaching steady state. The theme is recognising recursive and restart structures and solving them cleanly with expected value.

Round 2: model building under pressure

A single estimation problem, estimating the probability one table-tennis player scores the next point and wins from a given score, escalating through roughly 11 follow-ups. These probe small-sample behaviour, the assumptions baked into your formula, edge cases like 9-9 and 0-0, momentum versus independence (sequences like AABBB against BABAB), and how you would use historical data of varying age and reliability.

The interviewer cares far more about how you build, justify and revise a model than about any single number.

Round 3: market making

A live exercise with an explicit ruleset: your spread must be within 10 percent of your bid, you get 1 minute to make your first market after hearing the question, then 10 seconds to update after each trade, with 3 attempts to capture fair value.

Questions are estimation-heavy, often Fermi-style estimates wrapped in a market: making a market on a compound count such as the number of dentists times the number of schools in a village, the expected sum of the top 3 of 5 rolled dice (approached through continuous-distribution analogies and symmetry rather than brute force), or a combinatorial round-robin problem asking the maximum points the second-placed team could have scored.

Rehearse the spread-constrained drill on the market games and time your estimation on the Fermi trainer and the Fermi estimation game.

Round 4: HR

Standard behavioural and motivation questions on culture fit, your interest in trading and why IMC. This round rarely eliminates anyone who reaches it.

The explicit upside is the accelerated path: outstanding participants are fast-tracked, often straight to the final or evaluation stage of the internship process.

• Master market making fundamentals. Bid-ask spreads, pricing uncertainty, updating quotes as information arrives, and managing inventory and risk. Practise with the Market Making Dice Game and the Card Game.
• Be fast and accurate with numbers. Arithmetic speed underpins every trading simulation. Drill consistently on the Math Trainer.
• Sharpen probability and estimation. Brainteasers, probability puzzles and Fermi estimation come up in workshops and informal conversations alike. Work through the probability questions and the Fermi trainer.
• Communicate your reasoning. IMC cares how you think, not just what you conclude, so talk through your logic and justify the quotes you make.
• Engage genuinely. Ask real questions, collaborate with your cohort, and show authentic curiosity. Fit is part of the assessment and the people you meet may have a say in who advances.
• Be responsive. IMC values candidates who move quickly, so reply promptly and stay engaged after the programme ends.

Launchpad is one of the most efficient routes into IMC for early-stage students. It gives a realistic preview of the firm while offering a genuine shortcut into the internship pipeline for those who perform.

Treat the days as both a learning opportunity and an extended evaluation. Prepare your market making, mental arithmetic and probability in advance, engage properly with the people you meet, and say your thinking out loud.

Start with the market games and the brainteaser database, and read our full IMC interview guide, which covers the standard internship and graduate process that Launchpad feeds into.