Tower Research Capital Interview Guide

Mark Gorton founded Tower Research Capital in 1998 and became Chairman in 2019. Tower has built its business on a high-performance platform and independent trading teams.

There are dozens of trading and research teams. Systematic portfolio managers build their strategies independently while benefiting from the firm's economies of scale, and teams can trade on more than 150 venues worldwide.

Tower also has a liquidity provision business, which draws on its on-exchange market making to offer bilateral, disclosed liquidity.

Tower has more than a dozen offices. Besides the New York headquarters, they include London, Gurugram, Singapore, Amsterdam, Charleston, Chicago, Dubai, GIFT City, Hong Kong, Montreal, Paris and Shanghai.

Tower's internships page says C++ and Python are among the most common languages in quant trading: C++ for speed-sensitive systems, Python for research, modelling and data analysis. Tower also runs Rust in several production systems in its core trading infrastructure.

Tower recruits quant trading interns at every degree level, from undergraduates to PhDs, and its intern classes are small. Quant trading interns write and refine production-level code or models, join standups and strategy sessions, and present their results. Interns also attend training sessions on market structure, systems and tools.

TACTIC Quantitative Trader/Researcher internship, London

TACTIC stands for Trading, Algorithmic Computing, & Theory Internship Class. You start with two weeks of structured learning alongside the other interns, then rotate across two trading teams.

Check the eligibility wording. The posting opens with penultimate-year or final-year students, its qualifications say penultimate-year only, and Tower's internships page labels it for 2028 graduates. If you're in your penultimate year and graduate in 2028, you fit all three.

You need to be studying for a Bachelor's, Master's or PhD in maths, statistics, physics, electrical engineering, computer science, data science, financial engineering or a related quantitative field.

Quantitative Trader/Researcher Intern, New York and Chicago

The summer 2027 posting lists past industry experience, teaching assistant work and Olympiad participation as preferred, though none is required.

Quantitative Trader Intern (PhD), New York

The form asks whether you want a long internship of 4-6 months or a 10-week summer term.

Quantitative Researcher Intern, APAC

There are separate postings for Bachelor's or Master's students and for PhD students or postdocs, covering Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Sydney. The Bachelor's and Master's form asks whether you want 3-6 months or 8-10 weeks.

Quantitative Trader/Researcher Graduate Programme, London

One trading team runs this six-month programme for people graduating in 2027. You need a Master's or PhD in a quantitative field. The posting gives no start date, and the form asks for your earliest possible one.

Full-time Quantitative Trader/Researcher 2027, New York and Chicago

Open to Bachelor's, Master's and PhD graduates in computer science, maths, physics, electrical engineering or a related field, with 0-2 years of experience.

Other student roles

• Quantitative Developer Intern, summer 2027, in New York and Chicago.
• Software Developer Intern, summer 2027, in Montreal. You need spoken and written French and English.
• Central Execution Research internship in London: six months for PhD students, and it can run off-cycle at a time that suits you.

In a September 2026 post, one Tower quant trader, a Princeton computer science graduate, wrote that he interned at Tower in the summers of his sophomore and junior years before joining full time.

By April 2026, Tower's summer 2026 quant internships had generally been filled, and it was already getting ready for summer 2027 recruiting. Apply well before spring.

Lots of applicants say they know Python, Tower says, and fewer can point to something they shipped: a backtester, a market simulator, an analytics tool or a model evaluation pipeline. For research internships it wants projects with clear hypotheses, careful evaluation, an honest discussion of their limits and reproducible code, and it says those should show on your CV and LinkedIn.

Tower says the best preparation is going deep in your chosen track and coming out with strong fundamentals in probability, statistics, algorithms and coding. STEM majors are usually the most relevant, especially maths, computer science, physics and statistics. There's no required course list, and you usually don't need extra classes outside your major.

Tower's campus recruiting includes assessments: a Gurugram HR internship posting lists them alongside interview scheduling and offers. The posting doesn't say what they contain or which roles sit them.

As of August 2024, Tower sent a one-hour HackerRank test in Python for a quant developer role. If that's your track, practise timed Python problems. Tower's advice for quant engineering interns stresses data structures, algorithms and reasoning about complexity.

Tower's careers page, written for every role, says there are no gotcha questions, random logic problems or abstract academic discussions, and that Tower aims to make the interview a conversation about you, your past roles and what you could do there. Because it covers every role, don't count on a quant intern interview skipping probability questions.

What Tower looks for

• For trading interns, comfort thinking in probability, statistics and tradeoffs. Tower says you don't need to be a finance expert on day one.
• The concepts in the Quant 101 section of Tower's internships page: market vs limit orders, market microstructure and a glossary of trading terms. Tower says all its interns should know them.
• For trading roles, drive, clear communication, flexibility when conditions change suddenly, and calm and focus when the going gets tough.
• Humility, consistency, adaptability and self-awareness. Tower's CIO John Cogman wrote in November 2025 that these are often what set people apart.

Tower goes to career fairs and hosts info sessions, and its internships page has an email sign-up for news of its next visit to your campus. Its quant traders and researchers make occasional campus recruiting trips as part of the job.

Limestone Data Challenge

Tower's Limestone trading team runs a one-day challenge where students work in pairs on analytical and development problems. In spring 2026 it held its fourth at IIT Bombay and its first at MIT.

Tower calls the challenge an important annual event for its recruiting. The 2026 edition had cash prizes, and selected students were invited to more on-campus contact with Tower and possibly the Limestone Summit in May.

The first Limestone Summit ran from 7 to 9 May 2025 at Tower's Gurugram office, for 16 students from IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi.

Other campus events

• IICPC QuantFest 2025, a quant competition for Indian students at IIT Madras. Tower sponsored it and set a machine learning challenge at the finals.
• As of May 2025, Tower had helped organise a C++ Programming Bootcamp for Women Undergraduates with IIT Bombay.
• A University of Chicago panel on quantitative investment on 7 October 2025, co-hosted by Bank of America and UChicago's Master of Financial Mathematics programme.
• A talk by CIO John Cogman to Warwick Finance Societies at the University of Warwick in March 2026.