Tower Research Capital interview process (2026)
Round-by-round breakdown of the Tower Research Capital software engineering interview across 3 levels and 13 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.
Tower Research Capital salary & ratings · All interview processes
Software Engineering / Core Intern (~6-month, India — Gurgaon)
Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: Compressed campus timeline: on-campus HackerRank OA first; s · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks · Cooldown: No formally published cooldown; campus candidates who don't
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Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)
Assessment · 90-120 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank
Sample question: Shortest Bridge (minimum flips to connect two islands) — Given an N x M binary matrix where 1 is land and 0 is water, containing exactly two 4-directionally-connected islands, return the minimum number of 0s you must flip to 1 to connect the two islands into one.
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Round 1: Technical Round 1 — DSA/Coding + CS theory
Onsite · ~60 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
Sample question: Smallest number not representable as a subset sum — Given a list of positive integers, find the smallest positive integer that cannot be formed as the sum of any subset of the list. Candidates typically start with a DP idea and are steered to the O(n log n) greedy.
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Round 2: Technical Round 2 — Low-Level / OO Design
System_design · ~60 minutes · difficulty 3/5
Mode of interview: Live system design interview
Sample question: Design a cache with pluggable eviction (LRU / LFU via inheritance) — Low-level design: implement an in-memory cache supporting get/put with O(1) operations and a capacity bound. Follow-up (the graded part): let the user choose the eviction policy — restructure so LRU, LFU, etc. are interchangeable strategies via an abstract EvictionPolicy / inheritance, demonstrating abstraction and clean OOP over raw runnability.
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Round 3: HR / Informal Fit Round
Behavioral · ~10-30 minutes · difficulty 1/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
Software Engineer I / Software Developer — Gurgaon (entry/early-career; Python/Java-primary, C++ on some HFT teams)
Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: 1-4 weeks · Recommended prep: 4-6 weeks · Cooldown: Not documented for India. Unverified.
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Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)
Assessment · 90-120 minutes · difficulty 4/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Online assessment
Sample question: Shortest Bridge (minimum flips to connect two islands) — You are given an N*M binary matrix (N*M < 1e6) where 0 is water and 1 is land, containing exactly two 4-directionally-connected islands. Flip the minimum number of 0s to 1 to build a bridge connecting the two islands. Return that minimum number of flips.
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Round 1: Technical Round 1 — Coding + DSA/language fundamentals
Phone · ~60 minutes · difficulty 4/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview
Sample question: Cherry Pickup (max points top-left to bottom-right and back) — Given an N*N grid where each cell holds cherries (0/1) and -1 marks a blocked cell, walk from (0,0) to (N-1,N-1) moving only right/down collecting cherries, then walk back moving only left/up. Maximize total cherries (a cell counts once). Return 0 if no valid round trip exists.
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Round 2: Technical Round 2 — Low-Level / OOP Design
System_design · ~60 minutes · difficulty 3/5
Mode of interview: Live system design interview
Sample question: Design a cache with pluggable eviction policy (LRU/LFU) — Design a fixed-capacity cache supporting get/put where the caller chooses the eviction strategy (e.g. LRU vs LFU). Discuss O(1) data structures, abstracting the eviction policy behind an interface (implemented via inheritance), and thread-safety.
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Round 3: Hiring Manager Round — Projects + Design
Onsite · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
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Round 4: HR / Behavioral Round
Behavioral · 10-15 minutes · difficulty 1/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
Senior Software Developer — Gurgaon (HFT, C++ low-latency)
Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: 2-4 weeks · Recommended prep: 6+ weeks: hard algorithms plus deep C++ · Cooldown: Not documented for India. Unverified.
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Round 0: Online Assessment / Coding Screen
Assessment · 90-120 minutes · difficulty 4/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Online assessment
Sample question: Top-K largest values in a stream with updates (O(log N) per update) — Maintain the top-K largest values among a stream of (id, value) events where an id's value can be updated (not just inserted), in ~O(log N) per update. After each update, report the aggregate (e.g. sum) of the current top-K values.
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Round 1: Technical / Coding Interview(s)
Phone · ~60 minutes · difficulty 4/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview
Sample question: Median of two sorted arrays — Given two sorted arrays of possibly different sizes, find the median of the combined array in O(log(min(m,n))) time using a partition binary search.
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Round 2: Onsite Loop / Low-Latency Design (super-day)
System_design · Full-day, 5-6 interviews · difficulty 4/5
Mode of interview: Live system design interview
Sample question: Design a low-latency market-data ingestion + nanosecond timestamping system — Design a system that ingests a high-volume market-data feed and timestamps each message with nanosecond precision and millisecond-stable accuracy across machines. Cover NIC hardware timestamping, IEEE-1588 PTP vs GPS-disciplined clocks, clock-drift/sync trade-offs, and keeping the hot path allocation-free and cache-friendly.
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Round 3: Hiring Manager + Team Match / Behavioral
Behavioral · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 2/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
Other companies' interview processes
Worked sample solutions (code, design diagrams, and STAR answers) for every round are available in the FAANGPlus app: open interview processes.