I applied through college or university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Jane Street (New York, NY) in Nov 2009
Interview
Heavy emphasis on quantitative questions: mental math, probability, brain teasers of varying difficulty. I did three interviews with them over three weeks and was rejected after the third. During those three interviews I only got one single question relating to my resume or work experience, everything else was quantitative stuff.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
You flip four coins. At least two are tails. What is the probability that exactly three are tails? Do this in your head, you are not allowed to write anything down for this question.
N points lie on a circle. You draw lines connecting all the points to each other. These lines divide up the circle into a number of regions. How many regions is this? Assume that the points are scattered in such a way as to give the maximum number of regions for that N.
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