IMC Launchpad: The Complete Interview Guide

Launchpad is an exclusive, invitation-based program run out of IMC's regional hubs (Chicago in the US, Amsterdam in Europe, plus editions in Sydney and India), typically over 2-3 days. The cohorts are small, usually around 60 participants split into 2 groups, with a roughly equal number of full-time IMC traders, engineers, and quant researchers on hand throughout.

It is aimed squarely at students who are roughly 2 years from graduating, so you can be slotted into a penultimate-year internship the following summer. As an example, the 2026 US program targeted students eligible for a Summer 2027 Quant Trading Internship. Similarly, the 2026 Sydney program is currently targeting students who are interested in the 2027 and 2028 Quant Trading internship.

IMC looks for:

1. Second-year students interested in quantitative trading or software engineering roles.
2. Quantitative and CS-leaning backgrounds: degrees like Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, Econometrics, Actuarial Science, Computer Science, or equivalent.
3. A genuine interest in markets, even with no prior finance experience. Familiarity with a programming language (Python, R, or Matlab) is an advantage rather than a requirement.
4. Problem solvers who thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

One important eligibility note: candidates who have already applied to the Trader Intern or Graduate Trader roles in the same recruiting cycle are generally not eligible to apply to other IMC programs within that cycle. Pick the path that fits your year of study before you apply.

Getting into Launchpad follows IMC's standard early-stage funnel rather than the full trading interview process. Expect:

1. Application: Submit an application with an up-to-date resume to the specific Launchpad role for your region. Highlight technical skills, programming proficiency, quantitative coursework, competitions, and any projects that demonstrate analytical ability.
2. Online assessment: For most quant and trading-track applications, you will be invited to complete an assessment. IMC commonly uses cognitive and aptitude-style testing at this stage, so it is worth preparing the same way you would for the full Graduate Trader process.
3. Screening or interview: Depending on region and volume, you may have a short recruiter conversation or video screen to assess motivation and fit before a place is confirmed.

Because Launchpad feeds directly into the internship pipeline, treat the application seriously. A strong, well-targeted resume and a clean assessment performance are what get you through the door.

To prepare for the assessment stage, practice cognitive games and aptitude-style numerical and diagrammatic reasoning, and drill your mental arithmetic so speed under pressure is not a limiting factor.

The first day is about orientation and exposure. You can expect:

1. Welcome and introduction to IMC: A general welcome, an introduction to the firm, and usually an office tour.
2. Interactive presentations and games: Sessions that explain what IMC does and how trading and technology roles fit together, often delivered through interactive formats rather than slide decks.
3. Role insight: A clear picture of the trading and tech career paths on offer, including how quant traders and engineers collaborate day to day.
4. Networking: Structured time to meet full-time employees and fellow students. Many participants are also assigned a buddy, a current IMC employee on hand to answer questions throughout the program.

Day 1 is lower stakes on paper, but it is still observed. Curiosity, good questions, and the ability to engage with both peers and professionals all register.

The second day goes deeper and is where your aptitude becomes most visible:

1. Trading and technology deep dives: Further sessions on how IMC trades and builds its systems, plus an introduction to the internship and the kind of real project work interns take on.
2. Workshops: Practical sessions to sharpen technical and analytical skills.
3. Mock trading simulations: Hands-on manual and algorithmic trading simulations and market-making games. This is the core of the day. You will be making markets, managing risk, and making fast decisions in a simulated environment, often including poker-style or game-theory exercises in some regions.
4. Desk shadowing (region dependent): Some editions include time 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 for, because they are where your trading instincts, numeracy, and composure are on display.

The Mumbai edition of Launchpad runs the most interview-heavy version of the program: a formal online assessment followed by four interview rounds, rather than a discovery-only format. This section covers the 2026 Mumbai Trading Track cycle. Other editions (Chicago, Amsterdam, Sydney) lean more toward simulations and networking, so treat this as a guide to the kind of technical depth you face in Mumbai rather than a universal script. What is consistent across every edition is the underlying skill set: probability, expected value, estimation, market making, and the ability to defend your reasoning under follow-up questioning.

The funnel runs: CV shortlist, then online assessment, then four interview rounds (two quant, one market making, one HR). There is no further filtering between the CV screen and the OA. Interviews are held over Zoom, spaced roughly 4 days apart, with about a 1-month gap between the OA and the first round. Round durations are approximately 20, 40, 40, and 20 minutes. For a rough sense of 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 at the end.

The OA has four sections, weighted to reward strong technical performance:

1. Coding (around 20 minutes): A single string-manipulation problem in the style of a harder LeetCode question. This section carries the heaviest weight, and completing it well is a strong signal.
2. Quant puzzles (around 45 minutes): Roughly 20 probability and brainteaser-style questions. Alongside coding, this is the other section where exceptional performance drives selection.
3. Matrix pattern problems (around 10 minutes): About 10 visual pattern-recognition questions.
4. Sequences (around 10 minutes): About 20 number-sequence questions under heavy time pressure.

The selection pattern is that doing exceptionally well in either the coding or the quant-puzzle section, combined with solid overall performance, is what advances candidates. Practice each section type with the mental arithmetic drills, the brainteaser database, and sequence and pattern tools in the knowledge base.

A common theme runs across all four rounds: communication and thought process matter more than landing the exact final answer. Candidates advance through rounds on the strength of clear reasoning even without reaching a precise answer.

1. Round 1: Probability and expected value. A set of EV-driven puzzles. One is a sequential-decision dice game: you and an opponent each roll a fair die, you see only your own roll, and you may either keep it (PnL equals 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 really a geometric series in disguise. Another question is a random walk on the faces of a cube, asking for the probability the ant sits on a lateral face after n steps and how the three face probabilities behave as n tends to infinity (a Markov chain reaching steady state). The theme is recognising recursive and restart structures and solving them cleanly with expected value.
2. Round 2: Model building under pressure. A single estimation problem (estimating the probability one table-tennis player scores the next point and wins the match from a given score) that escalates 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 (analysing sequences like AABBB versus BABAB), and how you would incorporate 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 final number.
3. Round 3: Market making. A live market-making exercise with a clear 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, frequently Fermi-style estimates wrapped in a market (for example, making a market on a compound count like the number of dentists times the number of schools in a village), the expected sum of the top 3 of 5 rolled dice (approached via continuous-distribution analogies and reasoning about symmetry rather than brute force), and a combinatorial round-robin problem asking the maximum points the second-placed team could have scored.
4. Round 4: HR round. A standard behavioural and motivation round covering culture fit, your interest in trading, and your reasons for choosing IMC. This round rarely eliminates anyone who reaches it.

To prepare for this style, drill expected-value and sequential-decision problems, Markov-chain and random-walk intuition, and geometric-series recognition in the brainteaser database, practice timed estimation with Fermi questions, and rehearse the spread-constrained quoting drill with the market games and the how to play 'Make me a Market' guide.

The explicit upside of Launchpad is the accelerated path: outstanding participants are fast-tracked, often straight to the final or evaluation stage of the internship interview process. To put yourself in that group:

1. Master market-making fundamentals. Understand bid-ask spreads, how to price uncertainty, how to update quotes as information arrives, and how to manage inventory and risk. Practice with the
2. Be fast and accurate with numbers. Mental arithmetic speed is foundational to every trading simulation. Drill consistently with
3. Sharpen your probability and estimation intuition. Expect brainteasers, probability puzzles, and Fermi-style estimation in workshops and informal conversations. Work through the
4. Communicate your reasoning. IMC cares about how you think, not just your answer. Talk through your logic clearly and justify the quotes and decisions you make.
5. Engage genuinely. Ask thoughtful questions, collaborate well with your cohort, and show authentic curiosity about the work. Culture fit is part of the assessment, and the people you meet may have a say in who advances.
6. Be responsive and proactive. IMC values candidates who move quickly through the process. Reply promptly to follow-ups and stay engaged after the program ends.

Launchpad is one of the most efficient ways into IMC for early-stage students. It gives you a realistic preview of life at 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 math, and probability skills in advance, engage authentically with the people you meet, and communicate your thinking clearly.

Do that, and Launchpad can be the first step toward an IMC internship and, ultimately, a career in quantitative trading. To prepare, start with our market games, brainteaser database, and the full IMC interview guide, which covers the standard internship and graduate process that Launchpad feeds into.