I interviewed at Headlands Technologies (Chicago, IL)
Interview
Interviewed. very hard. It was a 2 hour hacker rank and the question was very challenging. make sure you study c++ before hand. otherwise you'll not be prepared. Overall cool company, wish I got the Job
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Headlands Technologies (Amsterdam) in Feb 2026
Interview
The process starts with a C++ HackerRank online assessment, followed by a 1-on-1 Zoom interview with a developer or researcher. The OA problems are medium-to-hard difficulty. Later rounds covered algorithms, OS concepts, concurrency, and open-ended systems questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
dp on trees problem, making market order book in c++
The first round of the interview was conducted via video call. During this session, the interviewer asked me a technical question about how I would identify and remove unused code from a company's codebase. Personally, I don’t think this is a particularly strong interview question—it's quite specific and not very applicable across different engineering roles. Unless someone has direct experience with codebase cleanup or large-scale refactoring, they’re unlikely to know the details. Moreover, since the company is a high-frequency trading firm, removing code is generally rare and often avoided due to the high risk of unintended consequences.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
removing unused or dead code in a large company's codebase