G-Research does not cut most applicants at the interview. It cuts them at a quiz. Before anyone reads your answers out loud, you sit a 10-question, 90-minute multiple-choice test (Techinterview, August 2026), and the people who pass it then face four one-hour technical interviews, one of which is a deep mathematics hour that Tradermath (September 2026) names as the place most candidates actually fail. The mistake most applicants make is treating the quiz as a brainteaser warm-up and the maths hour as a repeat of it. It is not: the interview goes deeper than anything on the quiz.
The other thing people get wrong is the degree bar. For the 2027 cycle the Quant Research Internship is open only to final- or penultimate-year Master's and PhD students (G-Research vacancy page, retrieved October 2026). Undergraduates who apply there are spending a slot on a role they cannot get.
Who they actually hire
G-Research is a London quantitative research and technology firm that uses statistical and machine-learning methods to predict movements in financial markets. It is unusually opaque about itself. It publishes no revenue or headcount, and Quantt's firm profile (2026) can only estimate 800+ staff. Even its UK accounts are split across staff entities with names like Alastair LLP and Braunford LLP, which eFinancialCareers (January 2026) described as a structure that makes pay and headcount hard to read.
What it does publish is who it wants. Across its current postings:
- Quant Research Internship (2027): final or penultimate year of a Master's or PhD in a highly technical or quantitative subject; strong maths; intermediate programming in an object-oriented language, preferably Python or C#; GitHub or Kaggle profile desirable, not required. No finance background needed.
- Quantitative Researcher – Postgraduate: a Master's or PhD (or working towards one) in maths, statistics, computer science, physics or engineering. New researchers go through ML College, an in-house programme that trains researchers into machine-learning practitioners.
- Quantitative Analyst: post-trade analysis in Python on large datasets plus C# in the trading platform. The posting asks for experience solving quantitative problems at pace through projects, internships or work, and does not state a degree level, which makes it the realistic quant-adjacent door for strong undergraduates.
- Engineering internships: 12 or 24 weeks in quantitative or infrastructure engineering, with a skills test and an assessment centre instead of the quant quiz (G-Research graduates page).
The firm also spends visibly on PhD pipelines. On 8 September 2026 it announced its 2026 PhD prize winners at Imperial College London, with awards of up to £10,000 for final- and penultimate-year PhD students in maths, machine learning and AI. If you are a PhD student at a university that runs one of these prizes, entering is a direct line to the people who hire.
The process, step by step
G-Research documents its own loop, which is rare. Third-party guides fill in the format detail:
| Stage | Format | What's graded | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online application | CV and personal details; reviewed within one week | Academic strength in maths, CS, physics | G-Research postgraduate posting |
| Quant quiz | 10 multiple-choice questions, 5 options each, 90 minutes; general or ML-specific version | Probability, statistics incl. OLS, linear algebra, calculus and differential equations, programming, finance | Techinterview (Aug 2026); Tradermath (Sep 2026) |
| Triage interview | Short technical screen with a researcher | Background and live questions | Tradermath (Sep 2026); Glassdoor reviews |
| Technical interviews | Four one-hour interviews: one in-depth mathematics, two drawn from statistics, finance, programming and ML. ML-track candidates sit two | Depth, not breadth; reasoning out loud | G-Research interview guide |
| Leadership interviews | Meetings with senior leaders | Judgment, motivation, fit | G-Research interview guide |
Glassdoor candidates rate the quantitative researcher process 3.6 out of 5 for difficulty, and quant research intern applicants rate it 3 out of 5 with 50% describing a positive experience (Glassdoor, retrieved October 2026). The firm's graduates page says graduate positions typically launch in August, so for 2027 starts the window is open now.
The quiz rewards a specific skill. Techinterview's breakdown notes that a few questions are quick, but at least a couple require real work, such as finding the value that minimises a cost function and then saying how that minimum shifts when a parameter changes. Ten questions in 90 minutes sounds generous until two of them eat 25 minutes each.
What gets people rejected
1. Shallow breadth in the maths hour. Tradermath (September 2026) is explicit that the mathematics interview goes deeper than quiz level and that broad, thin preparation is where candidates fail. Being able to recognise OLS is not the same as deriving it and explaining what collinear predictors do to it, which is one of the sample questions Techinterview lists.
2. Wrong track for your degree. The internship and postgraduate researcher roles both ask for a Master's or PhD. Undergraduates should apply to engineering or the Quantitative Analyst role, not research.
3. Bad time allocation on the quiz. With 10 questions in 90 minutes, the failure is spending 40 minutes on one derivation. Skip, bank the easy points, come back.
4. Freezing or bluffing in interviews. Techinterview's guide says candidates who freeze or bluff underperform, and that the ones who do well write down what they know and correct themselves aloud. G-Research's own interview guide says it is looking for the mindset of someone who will find the answer, not someone who already has every answer.
5. Preparing only brainteasers. One Glassdoor candidate described a first technical interview built on linear algebra, maths, statistics and some CS theory rather than puzzles; another described an online assessment, then a triage call, then three to four interviews with quant researchers (Glassdoor, retrieved October 2026). This is a statistics and ML shop more than a market-making shop.
6. Ignoring the ML route. If your background is machine learning, the ML-specific quiz and the shorter two-interview ML track exist for you. Taking the general quiz with an ML profile is choosing the harder fight.
Pay, honestly
G-Research does not publish compensation, and the public numbers are hard to interpret. The best primary source is the UK accounts. eFinancialCareers (January 2026) reported that for the year to March 2025, Alastair LLP paid 257 employees an average of £163.5k and Braunford LLP paid 49 employees an average of £2.17m, for an average of £550k across 306 people. In the 15 months to March 2023 the former main staff entity had over 1,000 employees averaging £299k. These are averages across all levels, so they tell you the ceiling is very high, not what a graduate offer is.
On the self-reported side, levels.fyi (updated 3 October 2026) shows a G-Research software engineer median of $250,746 total compensation. Benefits are published: 35 days' annual leave for office-based staff, 9% pension contributions, private health cover and free lunch, and interns get accommodation (G-Research postings, retrieved October 2026).
A 4-week plan
- Week 1: the quiz syllabus. Work through G-Research's own recommended book, 150 Most Frequently Asked Questions on Quant Interviews, and fill gaps in linear algebra, OLS and basic differential equations. Do timed sets of 10 at 9 minutes each, and practise skipping.
- Week 2: derive, don't recognise. Derive OLS from scratch, explain multicollinearity, work Kelly-criterion and expected-flips problems (both on Techinterview's sample list). Say every step aloud as if an interviewer is listening.
- Week 3: code and data. Write a small matrix class and a dataset summariser in Python, the practice problems Tradermath lists. If you are on the ML track, G-Research points to The Elements of Statistical Learning and Kaggle; a clean Kaggle notebook also strengthens the CV line the internship posting asks for.
- Week 4: full mocks. Run back-to-back one-hour mocks: one pure maths hour, one statistics or ML hour. The goal is depth under pressure for a full hour, not speed.
International students
London is the easiest place to say yes to for many international graduates, but the visa clock is changing. GOV.UK sets the Skilled Worker general threshold at £41,700, which any G-Research graduate offer will clear. G-Research's relocation page says it pairs hires with an immigration consultant and covers all immigration costs. Separately, the UK Graduate visa drops from two years to 18 months for applications made on or after 1 January 2027, while PhD graduates keep three years (The PIE News, October 2025). If you are finishing a UK Master's in 2026, applying for the Graduate visa before 1 January 2027 keeps the longer window while you job-hunt.
Practice
- See all the 2027 quant and tech deadlines on the New Grad 2027 tracker.
- For another London shop with a research-heavy loop, read how to get into XTX Markets.
- The closest US equivalent loop is a statistics-first researcher interview; try the Two Sigma quantitative researcher mock or the DE Shaw quantitative researcher mock. Applr's mocks ask follow-ups on your reasoning, which is what the maths hour grades.
- Check your CV against a parser before the one-week review: free ATS resume checker.
Sources
- G-Research, "Quant Research Internship" vacancy, retrieved Oct 2026
- G-Research, "Quantitative Researcher – Postgraduate" vacancy, retrieved Oct 2026
- G-Research, "Quantitative Analyst" vacancy, retrieved Oct 2026
- G-Research, "Quantitative Researcher Interview Questions" career guide, retrieved Oct 2026
- G-Research, Graduates and internships page, retrieved Oct 2026
- G-Research, Relocation support, retrieved Oct 2026
- G-Research, "2026 PhD prize winners: Imperial College London", Sep 2026
- eFinancialCareers, "London's most secretive electronic trading firm is obfuscating its pay", Jan 2026
- Techinterview, "The G-Research interview and the 90-minute quiz that gates it", Aug 2026
- Tradermath, "G-Research Interview Guide (2026)", Sep 2026
- Glassdoor, G-Research interview reviews, retrieved Oct 2026
- levels.fyi, G-Research salaries, updated Oct 2026
- Quantt, G-Research firm profile, 2026
- GOV.UK, Skilled Worker visa: your job, retrieved Oct 2026
- The PIE News, "Shorter Graduate Route from January 2027, UK govt confirms", Oct 2025
Frequently asked questions
- How hard is the G-Research quant quiz?
- It is 10 multiple-choice questions with five options each and 90 minutes on the clock (Techinterview, updated August 2026). Tradermath (September 2026) lists the topics as probability, statistics including OLS, linear algebra, calculus with differential equations, programming and finance. A few questions are quick; at least a couple need a real derivation, so time allocation matters more than raw speed.
- Can undergraduates apply to G-Research?
- Not to the quant research tracks. The 2027 Quant Research Internship asks for students in the final or penultimate year of a Master's or PhD, and the Quantitative Researcher – Postgraduate role asks for a Master's or PhD, per G-Research's own vacancy pages (retrieved October 2026). Undergraduates should look at the engineering internships and the Quantitative Analyst role, which does not state a degree level.
- How much does G-Research pay?
- G-Research does not publish salaries. Its UK accounts, as reported by eFinancialCareers in January 2026, show an average of £550k across 306 employees in two staff entities for the year to March 2025: 257 people averaging £163.5k and 49 averaging £2.17m. Those averages mix juniors and senior staff, so treat them as a ceiling signal, not a graduate offer.
- Does G-Research sponsor visas?
- Its relocation page says immigration is handled with an expert consultant and that all immigration costs are covered by G-Research, and the internship and postgraduate postings repeat that relocation and immigration costs are covered. For context, the UK Skilled Worker general salary threshold is £41,700 (GOV.UK, retrieved October 2026).
- When does the G-Research 2027 internship run?
- The Quant Research Internship runs for 10 weeks from 21 June to 27 August 2027, 09:00 to 17:30 in central London, with a mentor, an independent project and a final presentation to senior management (G-Research vacancy page, retrieved October 2026). G-Research says its graduate positions typically launch in August, so the 2027 cycle is already open.