Tower Research Capital Software Engineer Interview Guide

I wanted to share my interview experience with Tower Research Capital in Montreal because the process caught me off guard in a few ways. A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn, and even though I was not actively job hunting, the role sounded strong enough that I decided to explore it. I already work at a major bank in the U.S., so the main reason I kept going was personal: I have family near Montreal, and the possibility of being closer to them made the move worth considering.

The process started with two virtual coding interviews, and I passed both. After that, I was invited to Montreal for what I understood would be five in-person interviews, each about an hour long. Based on that, I expected the onsite to shift toward more senior-level topics like system design, architecture, scalability, or production experience. Instead, after waiting in a conference room, I was told the first interview would actually be virtual. That was already a little confusing since I had traveled for an onsite. The first interviewer opened with a very basic but tricky Python question, which made me think the rest of the round would stay in that style. The second interviewer was much better from my perspective and gave me a more realistic engineering problem, closer to what senior engineers deal with in practice. I solved that one and felt much more comfortable there.

What stood out most was that after the second interview, the remaining three interviewers never came out to speak with me. By then I had the feeling the first round had already set the tone, and that the rest of the process had effectively stopped. I left feeling like the interview was more about isolated tricky coding questions than about evaluating the broader experience I would bring as a senior engineer. I had already made real trade-offs to be there, including travel and salary expectations, so the mismatch was disappointing. In the end, I did not get an offer. My main takeaway is to clarify the exact onsite structure before traveling, especially if you have already passed earlier coding rounds. I would specifically ask whether the later rounds are still coding-heavy or whether they will cover system design, architecture, and real production trade-offs.