# Belvedere Trading Interview Guide (2026): Options Market Making, C++ Systems, and the Super Day

Source: https://www.techinterview.org/companies/belvedere-trading-interview-guide/
Updated: 2026-08-23 · techinterview.org

**TL;DR —** Belvedere Trading is a Chicago-founded options market maker that trades equity index, fixed income, and commodity derivatives, split between electronic systems and a floor presence at exchanges like the CBOE and CME. The interview loop is short but pointed: an online assessment heavy on mental math and probability, a virtual first round, and an in-person or remote Super Day with back-to-back interviews and trading exercises. Traders get probability and market-making questions; software engineers get live coding in a C++-leaning stack with a trading-systems angle. Expect fewer rounds than at the biggest quant shops, but each one sits closer to a senior trader or engineer than a recruiter script.

Belvedere Trading started in March 2002 as a market maker in the SPX options pit on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, running pricing models out of Excel workbooks before building its own software from scratch. It has since grown into a firm of roughly 300 people with offices in Chicago, Boulder, New York, and Singapore, trading equity index, fixed income, and commodity derivatives. The firm still keeps a floor presence at exchanges including the CBOE and CME alongside its electronic market-making operation, which is unusual among prop shops this size and shows up in how the firm talks about its history during interviews.

Unlike the largest quant trading firms, Belvedere is narrower in scope: it is an options and derivatives market maker first, not a multi-strategy hedge fund or a high-frequency shop trading every asset class. That focus carries into hiring. The firm builds its pricing and risk systems in house across trading, technology, and quantitative research teams, and it runs new hires through an internal training program (Belvedere Trading University) regardless of track. If you are coming from a background in [quant finance and Wall Street recruiting](/category/quant-finance/) more broadly, Belvedere's process will feel familiar in structure but noticeably more compressed than what you'd see at a firm with a thousand-plus employees.

## Process

The pipeline starts with an application and resume review. Belvedere says publicly that it does not screen by school, major, or GPA, which matters if you're coming from a nontraditional background or a state school without a heavy Wall Street pipeline. For internship cycles, recruiting tends to open in early August for the following summer, with first-round interviews in late August and Super Days landing in September — plan your prep calendar around that if you're targeting an internship rather than a full-time seat.

After the resume screen comes a role-specific online assessment, reported to run about an hour and to lean on mental math, basic probability, and pattern recognition rather than open-ended coding. Candidates who describe this stage note it's a real filter, not a formality, so treat it like a timed test rather than something to click through. Clearing the OA leads to a first-round virtual interview, usually shorter than an hour, with a trader or team member plus someone from recruiting. Trading candidates get brain teasers and a conversation about markets; software engineering and quant developer candidates get live coding, typically in C++ since that's the language most heavily favored on the technology side, though some teams work in Python or Rust.

The final stage is the Super Day, run in person in Chicago or over video for candidates who can't travel. Accounts describe four to five back-to-back interviews in a single day, sometimes paired with one or two timed trading or market-making exercises, and a lunch or informal session with the team. Because Belvedere is smaller and more selective than some of the bigger prop shops, you'll typically face fewer total rounds than at a firm like Optiver or Jane Street, but each round tends to be a direct conversation with a senior trader, engineer, or researcher rather than a generalist interviewer. Decisions generally come within a few weeks of the Super Day. Sharpen your baseline before you get there — the [algorithm patterns cheat sheet](/algorithm-patterns-cheat-sheet/) is a reasonable way to refresh core coding patterns if you're on the software engineering or quant developer track, and any behavioral prep should draw on general frameworks like the [STAR method for behavioral interview questions](/post/3233460379/behavioral-interview-questions-2026-star-method-amazon-leadership-principles-and-winning-answers/) since Belvedere does ask about teamwork and ownership alongside the technical material.

## What they actually ask

- Mental math under time pressure — quick multiplication, percentages, and expected-value calculations done without a calculator, especially for trading and quant trading tracks

- Probability brain teasers, including coin-flip sequences, dice problems, and card-based expected-value puzzles

- Market-making and pricing intuition — how to set a bid-ask spread, reason about adverse selection, and think through a simple options market-making scenario

- Options concepts for quant trading and research roles — the Greeks, volatility surfaces, and basic multi-leg strategies like spreads and condors

- Live coding for software engineering and quant developer candidates, generally in C++, covering data structures, memory handling, and algorithmic problems rather than obscure trivia

- Code reading and review exercises, where you're handed an existing snippet and asked to reason about correctness or performance out loud

- Behavioral questions about working on a team, taking ownership of a project, and why you're interested in a firm this size versus a larger bank or fund

- General market awareness — what moved a particular index or sector recently, and whether you can talk through it without notes

## Levels and comp (2026)

Belvedere doesn't publish level titles or bands, and public data points are thin compared to what's available for the largest quant firms. Software engineering, quant developer, and quant trading roles appear to follow a fairly standard track — entry level, then progression tied to performance and tenure rather than a rigid published ladder, with a separate "backed trading" arrangement for experienced traders who come in managing their own book. For actual figures, check levels.fyi and Glassdoor directly rather than trusting any single number you see repeated online; compensation at a firm this size can vary a fair amount by role, desk, and how a given year's P&L nets out, and self-reported data points are sparse enough that outliers get overweighted. If you get to an offer stage, ask directly about the split between base, bonus, and any profit-sharing tied to the desk or book you'd be working on, since that structure matters more at a market maker than the headline base number does.

## Prep priorities

If you're interviewing for a trading or quant trading track, put most of your prep time into mental math drills and probability puzzles you can solve out loud under a clock — expected value, conditional probability, and simple combinatorics come up repeatedly, and speed matters as much as getting the right answer. Layer in options basics: what the Greeks mean intuitively, how implied volatility behaves, and how a market maker thinks about setting and adjusting a quote. Practicing mock market-making games, even simple ones, will help more than reading a textbook chapter on options theory.

If you're on the software engineering or quant developer track, the interview reads like a standard technical loop with a trading-systems accent. Get comfortable with C++ fundamentals — memory management, performance trade-offs, and writing correct code quickly under time pressure — since that's the language most teams favor even if a specific role allows Python or Rust. Review core data structures and algorithms the way you would for any systems-adjacent engineering interview, and be ready to talk through why a design choice matters for latency or correctness in a low-latency trading context, even if you haven't worked in finance before.

Across both tracks, prepare two or three specific stories about a project you owned end to end, since Belvedere's culture language leans hard on ownership and teamwork, and interviewers ask about it directly. Have a real answer ready for why you want a firm of this size and focus rather than a large bank or a bigger multi-strategy shop — vague enthusiasm reads poorly against interviewers who work there every day.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What does Belvedere Trading actually do?
Belvedere is a proprietary trading firm that makes markets in options and other derivatives on equity indexes, fixed income products, and commodities. It trades both electronically and on the floor of exchanges like the CBOE and CME, and it builds its own pricing and risk systems internally rather than buying vendor software.

### How many interview rounds should I expect?
Typically four stages: a resume screen, an online assessment, a first-round virtual interview, and a Super Day with several back-to-back interviews plus one or two trading or technical exercises. That's fewer total touchpoints than some larger quant firms use, but each round tends to be with someone who actually does the job day to day.

### Do software engineers need to know C++?
C++ is the language most heavily favored for engineering interviews and for a lot of the production systems, so it's worth being comfortable with it even if you primarily code in something else. Some teams do use Python or Rust, so ask your recruiter which team you're interviewing for and whether the language expectation is flexible.

### Is Belvedere Trading only for people with a finance background?
No. Belvedere states it doesn't screen candidates by school, major, or GPA, and new hires across tracks go through an internal training program after joining. A strong computer science or math background matters more than prior finance coursework, especially for software engineering and quant developer roles.

### How competitive is the process?
Candidate reports describe the online assessment as a real filter with a meaningful drop-off rate, and Glassdoor reviewers rate the overall interview difficulty in the middle of the scale, on par with other mid-size proprietary trading firms. The bar is less about trick questions and more about staying calm and accurate while someone is watching you work.