IMC

IMC is a global trading firm and liquidity provider, headquartered in Amsterdam. It started in 1989 with two traders working together on the floor of the Amsterdam Equity Options Exchange, and moved early from the trading floor to screens and then to fully automated trading systems. Today IMC calls itself a research-driven trading firm, where quantitative modelling, machine learning and engineering shape how it trades. It has more than 2,000 employees across ten offices and is led by CEO Michaël De Lathauwer, who took over in 2025.

IMC trades on more than 120 exchanges and says it is one of the three largest liquidity providers in listed options worldwide by volume. It is lead market maker for more than 150 US ETFs, has run a US options wholesaling business since 2016, and makes markets in crypto on both centralised and decentralised exchanges. 2025 was a record year, with net trading revenue of 3.12 billion US dollars, up 40%, and a net profit of 968 million US dollars. The firm also takes strategic stakes in market infrastructure, from exchanges such as MEMX and MIAX to firms like Clear Street and McKay Brothers.

Amsterdam remains the headquarters. IMC opened in Chicago, now its largest office, in 2000, followed by Sydney in 2002, Hong Kong in 2006, Seoul in 2020, Mumbai in 2021 and London in 2022, the same year it acquired a crypto trading firm in Zug. In Aarhus it launched a power and gas trading business in 2026, and in New York it is building a hub for its systematic equities business.

What IMC Trades

• Options
  Market making in equity index and single-stock options worldwide, where IMC reports more than 20% of volume in contracts such as SPX, Euro Stoxx 50, DAX and Kospi options, plus VIX, VSTOXX, commodity and FX options.
• ETFs and equities
  Lead market making for more than 150 US ETFs, equity and ETF market making in Hong Kong, and a growing systematic equities business run from New York.
• Crypto
  Spot, perpetuals, futures and options on the major centralised exchanges and more than 20 decentralised exchanges, with Zug as the crypto hub.
• FX, commodities and energy
  FX options and commodity derivatives traded from London, and power and gas trading from Aarhus.
• Institutional liquidity
  Direct pricing for institutional clients away from the exchange screens since 2018, with US trades going through its broker-dealer, IMC Execution Services.

Culture and Benefits

IMC’s values include daring to continuously innovate, collaborating to succeed, championing the best ideas, taking responsibility and keeping both feet on the ground. Its European offices list free breakfast and lunch, an in-house gym and massages, sports groups, language training for expats and an annual company weekend trip, as well as in-house courses such as Trading for non-Traders and C++ classes. Giving is a visible part of the culture: through its annual Trading for Charity Day and donation matching, IMC gave almost 30 million US dollars to non-profits in 2025.

Hiring at IMC

IMC hires traders, quantitative researchers, software and hardware engineers and machine learning specialists, with most openings in Chicago, Sydney and Amsterdam. All graduates join the Graduate Traineeship, which starts in February or August. Traders begin with a six-week Trading School alongside graduates from Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific, developers with a five-week Development School and hardware engineers with a three-week FPGA School. Internships last ten weeks in Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific and nine weeks in India, and no finance background is required. Current US job ads list a base salary of 250,000 US dollars for graduate quantitative traders and researchers and 200,000 US dollars for graduate software engineers. You can apply to each role once per recruiting season.

IMC also runs Prosperity, a global trading challenge in which teams build Python trading algorithms and make manual trading decisions over several rounds. The 2026 edition drew more than 18,000 teams, and standout performers can be offered internships or graduate roles.

IMC publishes a recruitment process that applies to all roles:

• Application
  Your application is reviewed by the recruitment team.
• Assessment
  The format depends on the role and is not always online. Your recruiter explains it in advance.
• First-round interviews
  Introductions, your motivation and your relevant experience.
• Final round
  Several interview stations, each with different people from the firm. IMC books travel and accommodation for interviews on site.
• Offer
  Feedback usually follows within a couple of days.

For traders, IMC’s own interview guide lists what to prepare: expected value, conditional probability and Bayes’ rule, market making games in which you quote prices and adjust them as trades come in, brainteasers, and mental maths such as two- and three-digit multiplication. Behaviour is assessed throughout, including in the technical rounds. Software engineering interviews, in Java or C++, focus on data structures and algorithms, memory and computer architecture, and concurrency.