How to Apply to Viking Global Investors

12 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 2 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Viking Global Investors is a roughly $50 billion Tiger Cub hedge fund headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, with investment offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, and San Francisco, founded in 1999 by Andreas Halvorsen and two colleagues from Julian Robertson's Tiger Management.
  • The firm uses Greenhouse as its applicant tracking system, with the public board live at job-boards.greenhouse.io/vikingglobalinvestors. Openings are intentionally sparse and frequently posted as broad 'Opportunistic' talent-pool listings rather than narrowly defined roles.
  • Investment-team hiring draws almost exclusively from top-tier investment banking analyst programs, MBB consulting, top MBA programs, and a small set of competitor buy-side firms. Non-traditional candidates can break in but face a substantially higher bar of proof.
  • The interview process for an investment seat typically runs six to eight rounds over four to ten weeks and includes a recruiter screen, multiple stock-pitch conversations, a take-home modeling test or in-office case, behavioral interviews, and a final partner round.
  • Cultural fit is screened as rigorously as technical skill. Viking values intellectual honesty, low-ego conviction, long-horizon thinking, and quiet competence over visible ambition. Self-promoters are filtered out early.
  • Compensation is at the top of the industry but structured for multi-year tenure. The firm's explicit bet is on a long apprenticeship, and average tenure is unusually long for the hedge fund world.
  • Andreas Halvorsen handed the CEO role to Justin Walsh in 2024 in a long-telegraphed succession. The transition signals institutional continuity and is a positive long-term hiring signal.

About Viking Global Investors

Viking Global Investors LP is a Connecticut-based investment firm managing roughly $50 billion across long/short equity hedge funds and a growth-equity arm called Viking Global Opportunities. Founded in 1999 by Andreas Halvorsen, David Ott, and Brian Olson — three alumni of Julian Robertson's Tiger Management — Viking is one of the most prominent of the so-called 'Tiger Cubs,' the cluster of funds whose pedigree traces back to Robertson's stable. From a single Stamford headquarters and investment offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, and San Francisco, roughly 250 employees run a research-driven, fundamentally oriented book that has compounded capital for institutional investors, endowments, and family offices for more than two decades. What sets Viking apart in the hedge fund landscape is the deliberate quietness of its public posture. The firm does not court the press, rarely speaks at conferences, and almost never publishes thought pieces or open letters. Its website is minimalist by design — a single page of corporate description, a list of office cities, and a careers link. That austerity is a cultural artifact, not a marketing accident: Viking has long cultivated a partnership ethos in which the work speaks for itself and individual analysts are expected to develop conviction on the basis of evidence, not narrative. The firm runs a relatively concentrated long/short book, with research-heavy positions held over multi-quarter and multi-year horizons, and it pairs that public-markets practice with Viking Global Opportunities, the private and growth-equity strategy that has scaled meaningfully over the past several years and now invests across late-stage technology, healthcare, and consumer companies. Leadership transitioned in a generational way during 2024, when Andreas Halvorsen stepped back from day-to-day chief-executive duties and Justin Walsh assumed the CEO role. The succession was orchestrated rather than abrupt — Halvorsen telegraphed the move years in advance and remains involved at the firm — but it represents one of the more carefully managed founder transitions in the hedge fund industry. The signal for candidates is that Viking is investing in institutional continuity. The next generation of partners is now running the platform, the growth-equity arm continues to scale, and the firm appears to be building toward a future that does not depend on any single principal. For job seekers, the practical reality is this: Viking is one of the most selective employers in finance, openings are rare, and the firm draws heavily from a narrow set of feeder programs (top-tier investment-banking analyst classes, the elite three of management consulting, top MBA programs, and a handful of buy-side competitors). It is not impossible to break in from outside that path — every cohort includes a few candidates who arrive via less conventional routes — but the bar is uniformly high and the process is long. The reward is exposure to one of the most rigorous investment apprenticeships in the industry, working alongside partners who care intensely about analytical craft, in a culture that prizes humility, intellectual honesty, and durability over flash.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Find the live opening on the Viking Global careers page (vikingglobal

    Find the live opening on the Viking Global careers page (vikingglobal.com/careers), which redirects to the firm's Greenhouse-hosted board at job-boards.greenhouse.io/vikingglobalinvestors. The board is intentionally sparse — Viking typically posts only a handful of roles at any given time, and many openings appear under broad 'Opportunistic' headings (for example, 'Opportunistic — Investment Teams' or 'Opportunistic — Operations Teams') rather than as narrowly defined job titles. Treat these opportunistic postings as standing invitations to enter the talent pool rather than guarantees of an immediate seat.

  2. 2
    Submit your application directly through Greenhouse

    Submit your application directly through Greenhouse. The form is short by design: resume upload, contact details, work-authorization questions, and a small number of role-specific prompts. Do not over-engineer the cover letter — Viking's recruiters skim thousands of submissions and look first at pedigree signals, GPA, deal sheets, and concrete investment work. A focused two-paragraph note explaining what you actually want to do at the firm will serve you better than a generic letter of interest.

  3. 3
    Expect silence for an extended window

    Expect silence for an extended window. Unlike banking or consulting recruiting, Viking does not run an annual on-cycle process with a fixed timeline. Applications are reviewed when a hiring partner has a specific seat to fill, and that may be weeks or months after submission. Resist the urge to ping recruiting repeatedly. If a partner you know personally has offered to put your name in front of the team, a single warm introduction is far more effective than cold persistence.

  4. 4
    If selected, the first conversation is typically a recruiter screen

    If selected, the first conversation is typically a recruiter screen — 30 to 45 minutes covering background, motivations, why Viking specifically, and a high-level read on your investment thinking. The recruiter is calibrating fit and pedigree, not technical depth. Be prepared to articulate, in two minutes or less, why you want a long-term seat at a long-only-style hedge fund rather than a private-equity, banking, or consulting career.

  5. 5
    The first technical round usually involves one or two associates or VPs and focu

    The first technical round usually involves one or two associates or VPs and focuses on a stock pitch. Bring a written or memorized long pitch on a publicly traded company you genuinely follow — ideally one with an unconventional thesis, not the consensus FAANG name. Expect detailed pushback on every assumption: TAM build, unit economics, capital allocation, management quality, competitive dynamics, valuation framework, and the specific catalyst path. Viking analysts are trained to look for what would make them wrong; expect the same scrutiny in reverse.

  6. 6
    Modeling tests are common for investment-team candidates and almost universal fo

    Modeling tests are common for investment-team candidates and almost universal for analyst-program hires. The typical format is a take-home with a two-to-five-day window: build a three-statement model from a public 10-K, derive a valuation, and write up a one-to-three-page investment memo with a recommendation. Some candidates instead receive a timed in-office case (four to six hours) where they build a model from raw filings and present to a small panel. Accuracy matters; the memo matters more.

  7. 7
    Successive rounds layer in additional partners and senior analysts, often across

    Successive rounds layer in additional partners and senior analysts, often across multiple offices. Expect three to five further interviews after the modeling step, including a deep-dive on your written memo, behavioral conversations with team leads, and at least one round dedicated to culture and judgment. Total interview count for an investment-team seat commonly reaches six to eight conversations spread over four to ten weeks.

  8. 8
    The final stage is a partner round with one or more of the firm's senior princip

    The final stage is a partner round with one or more of the firm's senior principals. These conversations test conviction, intellectual honesty, and the ability to defend your reasoning under pressure without becoming defensive. Partners are explicitly looking for evidence that you will tell them they are wrong when you genuinely believe it — a trait Viking values highly and screens for deliberately.

  9. 9
    Offers are extended verbally first, with written documentation following

    Offers are extended verbally first, with written documentation following. Compensation packages for investment seats are at the very top of the industry — base, guaranteed sign-on, and discretionary year-end performance pay — but the firm does not negotiate on culture-fit terms (start date, location flexibility, scope) the way a corporate employer might. The package is structured to reward multi-year tenure, with a meaningful portion of expected pay only realized through staying and producing.

  10. 10
    For non-investment seats (operations, technology, legal, compliance, finance, in

    For non-investment seats (operations, technology, legal, compliance, finance, investor relations, talent), the process is shorter — typically four to six rounds — and the technical content is calibrated to the function. Modeling tests are replaced with role-relevant exercises (a code review for engineering candidates, a memo for legal, a process design for ops). The bar for cultural fit and analytical rigor remains identical.

Resume Tips for Viking Global Investors

recommended

Lead with the credential signals Viking screens for: the specific bank and group

Lead with the credential signals Viking screens for: the specific bank and group (Goldman Sachs TMT, Morgan Stanley M&A, Evercore Restructuring), the specific consulting firm and practice (McKinsey TMT, Bain Private Equity Group, BCG Financial Institutions), and the precise GPA from a target school. Burying these in the third bullet of the third role wastes the recruiter's first ten seconds.

recommended

Quantify investment exposure precisely

Quantify investment exposure precisely. 'Built three-statement LBO model for $4.2B carve-out' beats 'supported deal team on transaction.' If you have buy-side experience, name the strategy (long/short equity, growth equity, distressed credit), the AUM, and the specific roles you played in idea generation, modeling, and monitoring.

recommended

If you have written investment memos, mention them by ticker and outcome

If you have written investment memos, mention them by ticker and outcome. A line that reads 'Authored long memo on $TICKER, +47% from publication to firm exit' demonstrates exactly the analytical product Viking buys.

recommended

Keep the document to one page

Keep the document to one page. Viking's recruiters and partners are reading hundreds of resumes for every seat; a two-page resume signals that you cannot prioritize, which is precisely the opposite of the trait the analyst seat requires.

recommended

Drop the objective statement, the skills bar charts, and the personal-interest s

Drop the objective statement, the skills bar charts, and the personal-interest section unless an interest is genuinely substantive (you race motorcycles, you write a sub-stack on semiconductor industry economics, you serve on a nonprofit investment committee). Generic 'reading, traveling, photography' lines waste valuable real estate.

recommended

Order roles strictly reverse-chronological with consistent date formatting

Order roles strictly reverse-chronological with consistent date formatting. The applicant tracking system parses dates rigidly; a single inconsistent format can break the chronology in the recruiter's view and make your tenure look unstable.

recommended

Include extracurricular leadership only when it demonstrates judgment or initiat

Include extracurricular leadership only when it demonstrates judgment or initiative — running an undergraduate investment fund, leading a nonprofit board, founding a company. Avoid honor-society memberships and intramural sports unless they fill space your work history cannot.

recommended

Use plain ASCII formatting: no embedded photos, no two-column layouts, no decora

Use plain ASCII formatting: no embedded photos, no two-column layouts, no decorative icons, no text inside images. Greenhouse's parser is competent but not perfect, and a clean single-column document maximizes the chance that every detail you wrote actually surfaces in the recruiter's view.

recommended

Spell-check obsessively, and have at least two finance-literate readers proof th

Spell-check obsessively, and have at least two finance-literate readers proof the document before you submit. A typo on a Viking application is treated as a signal of carelessness, and carelessness is a disqualifying trait for an analyst seat at a fund whose entire business is double-checking the work.

recommended

If you are pivoting from a non-traditional background, lead the resume with a on

If you are pivoting from a non-traditional background, lead the resume with a one-sentence positioning line at the top of the page — not a paragraph — that frames the transition. Example: 'Software engineer (Stripe, four years) seeking long/short equity research role; published investment memos available on request.' Viking will give a non-traditional candidate a fair read, but only if the resume makes the case for the pivot in the first five seconds.

ATS System: Greenhouse

Viking Global Investors uses Greenhouse as its applicant tracking system. The public-facing job board lives at job-boards.greenhouse.io/vikingglobalinvestors, and the firm's careers page (vikingglobal.com/careers) redirects there. Greenhouse is a structured, modern ATS used by most well-run investment firms; it parses resumes cleanly when documents are formatted in plain single-column layouts, and it presents application data to recruiters in a standardized profile view that emphasizes work history, education, and answers to custom application questions.

  • Submit a PDF (not a Word document) generated from a single-column, plain-text-friendly template. Greenhouse parses PDFs reliably; multi-column resumes and image-based PDFs frequently have fields dropped or scrambled.
  • Fill out every application field — even the optional ones. Greenhouse exposes optional fields to recruiters as a 'completeness' signal, and partial applications get filtered down the pile.
  • Use the same name, email, and phone number on the application form as on your LinkedIn profile and resume. Greenhouse aggregates duplicate applications, and inconsistent contact information can split your record into two profiles or trigger a duplicate-application warning to the recruiter.
  • If the role asks for a writing sample, investment memo, or code sample, attach it directly through the Greenhouse upload field rather than linking to a cloud-storage URL. Recruiters rarely click external links during initial screen.
  • When a recruiter advances you, Greenhouse automatically schedules interviews via embedded calendar links. Confirm the time zone before you accept — Viking interview slates frequently span Stamford, New York, London, and Hong Kong, and a wrong-time-zone confirmation creates an avoidable friction point in your candidacy.

Interview Culture

Viking's interview process is best understood as an extended, deliberately ambiguous evaluation of how you think under pressure.

The firm is famously low-key in style — there is no theatrics, no shouting, no McKinsey-style case-interview script — but the substance is unforgiving. Partners and senior analysts are looking for three traits in combination: analytical rigor (can you build a clean model and defend every assumption), intellectual honesty (will you change your mind when the evidence requires it), and conviction without arrogance (do you hold strong views without becoming defensive when challenged). The interviewers tend to be soft-spoken, polite, and genuinely curious; the questions tend to be hard. Expect a long process. Six to eight interview conversations over four to ten weeks is standard for an investment-team seat. The cadence is partly a function of partner schedules — Viking partners travel constantly and prioritize portfolio work over recruiting timelines — and partly deliberate: the firm wants to see you across multiple touchpoints, with multiple interviewers, on multiple days, to build a triangulated view of judgment and temperament. The same stock pitch will often be tested in two or three different rounds, with progressively harder pushback at each stage. If you change your view between rounds, be prepared to explain why; if you do not change your view, be prepared to explain why the new objections do not move you. The stock-pitch component is the single most important technical screen. Viking is uninterested in a polished sales presentation; they want to see the messy reality of your investment thinking. Pick a name you have actually researched in depth, not a name you think will impress. Be ready to discuss every line of the income statement, every assumption in your valuation, the specific catalysts that will close the gap between your view and consensus, and — most importantly — the specific evidence that would prove you wrong. Candidates who cannot articulate a credible bear case on their own pitch are routinely cut at the second round. Behavioral interviews at Viking are not boilerplate. Expect questions about specific moments when you changed your mind on a major decision, specific instances of conflict with a manager or teammate, and specific examples of times you were wrong. The firm screens hard for intellectual honesty, and the cleanest disqualifying signal is a candidate who cannot recall a single substantive mistake. The culture itself rewards quiet competence over visible ambition. New analysts are expected to spend their first year primarily listening, building models, reading filings, and writing memos for senior review — not pitching ideas in firm-wide meetings. Promotions are slow but durable; tenure at Viking is unusually long for the hedge fund industry, with many analysts staying a decade or more before reaching partner-track seats. Compensation is at the top of the industry, but the explicit deal is multi-year: the firm is buying a long apprenticeship, not a quick rotation.

What Viking Global Investors Looks For

  • Demonstrated analytical rigor — most readily evidenced by a top-tier investment banking analyst program (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Evercore, Centerview, Lazard, Moelis, PJT) or an MBB consulting practice (McKinsey, Bain, BCG) with deep modeling exposure.
  • Genuine, unprompted curiosity about public companies — the kind of candidate who reads 10-Ks for fun, follows quarterly earnings calls outside of any job requirement, and has unsolicited views on three or four specific stocks.
  • Intellectual honesty under pressure — the willingness to say 'I don't know,' to change your mind when the facts change, and to acknowledge mistakes without excuses.
  • Long-horizon thinking — Viking holds positions for quarters and years, not days; the firm screens out candidates whose investment instincts are more trader than analyst.
  • Cultural humility — the firm explicitly avoids self-promoters and prefers candidates whose references describe them as low-ego, generous with credit, and easy to work with on a long-tenured team.
  • Quantitative fluency — clean three-statement modeling, an instinctive understanding of unit economics and capital allocation, and the ability to estimate orders of magnitude on the fly without a calculator.
  • Written communication — Viking is a memo culture; the ability to write a clear, structured, three-page investment thesis is more valuable than the ability to deliver a polished spoken pitch.
  • Industry depth or the demonstrated ability to develop it — most successful Viking analysts arrive with or quickly build deep expertise in one or two sectors (technology, healthcare, consumer, financials) rather than maintaining a generalist surface across all twelve.
  • Top-tier educational pedigree — undergraduate degrees from a small set of target schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, and a handful of others) are heavily over-represented; MBAs from HBS, Stanford GSB, and Wharton dominate the post-MBA hires.
  • For non-investment seats: domain mastery, a calm temperament, and a service-oriented mindset toward the investment teams. Operations, technology, legal, and compliance functions at Viking are treated as essential infrastructure, not back-office support, and the bar for hire is correspondingly high.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does Viking Global Investors use?
Viking Global Investors uses Greenhouse for all open roles. The careers page at vikingglobal.com/careers redirects to the firm's Greenhouse-hosted board at job-boards.greenhouse.io/vikingglobalinvestors. All applications, scheduling, and offer logistics flow through Greenhouse.
Where is Viking Global Investors headquartered?
Viking is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, with additional investment offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. The firm was founded in Greenwich and remains closely associated with the Connecticut hedge fund corridor.
How many people work at Viking Global?
Viking is a small firm relative to its assets under management, with roughly 250 employees globally across investment, operations, technology, legal, and corporate functions. The investment team is intentionally lean — partners and senior analysts manage concentrated portfolios rather than running large research pyramids.
How much does Viking Global manage?
Viking manages roughly $50 billion across its long/short equity hedge fund flagship and Viking Global Opportunities, the firm's growth-equity arm, which has scaled meaningfully over the past several years.
Who founded Viking Global and is the founder still involved?
Viking was founded in 1999 by Andreas Halvorsen, David Ott, and Brian Olson, all of whom previously worked at Julian Robertson's Tiger Management — the lineage that earns Viking its 'Tiger Cub' designation. Halvorsen handed the CEO role to Justin Walsh in 2024 in a long-telegraphed succession but remains involved at the firm. The transition was orchestrated rather than abrupt and is widely viewed as one of the more carefully managed founder transitions in the hedge fund industry.
What kinds of roles does Viking hire for?
Viking hires across investment teams (analysts, associates, and senior research roles), portfolio implementation and trading, technology and engineering, operations, legal, compliance, finance, investor relations, and talent. Investment seats are the most selective and the rarest; corporate and infrastructure roles open more frequently and follow a shorter interview process.
How hard is it to get a job at Viking Global?
Viking is widely considered one of the most selective employers in the hedge fund industry. Investment-team openings are rare, draw applications from the top of every feeder program (banking, consulting, MBA, competitor funds), and run a six-to-eight-round process that screens hard on both technical skill and cultural fit. Non-investment roles are still highly competitive but follow a shorter and more conventional process.
What does the investment-team interview process look like?
Expect a recruiter screen, multiple stock-pitch conversations with associates and VPs, a take-home modeling test or timed in-office case, behavioral interviews, and a final partner round. Total interview count is typically six to eight conversations spread over four to ten weeks. The stock pitch is the single most important technical screen, and partners explicitly test for the ability to defend a thesis under pressure without becoming defensive.
Does Viking Global hire interns?
Viking runs a small, highly selective summer internship program, primarily targeting students from a narrow set of target undergraduate and MBA programs. Internship recruiting is on-cycle for MBAs and is typically managed through campus career offices at the target schools. Undergraduate intern hiring is deliberately small and follows a similar Greenhouse application flow as full-time roles.
What is Viking Global's culture like?
Viking's culture is famously low-key, intellectually intense, and long-tenured. The firm values quiet competence over visible ambition, intellectual honesty over confidence theater, and long-horizon thinking over short-term trading instincts. New analysts spend their first year primarily listening, modeling, and writing memos for senior review rather than pitching firm-wide. Average tenure is unusually long for the hedge fund industry.
Does Viking pay well?
Compensation at Viking is at the top of the hedge fund industry across all functions. Investment-team packages include competitive base salaries, guaranteed sign-on bonuses, and discretionary year-end performance pay that scales meaningfully with seniority and fund performance. The package is explicitly structured to reward multi-year tenure, with a meaningful portion of expected pay only realized through staying and producing.
Should I network in to Viking, or is a cold application enough?
A warm introduction from someone the firm knows and trusts is materially more effective than a cold application — but a single high-quality referral, not repeated outreach. Viking recruiters are inundated and screen hard against signs of desperation. If you do not have a natural connection to the firm, submit a clean Greenhouse application, write a focused cover note, and let the resume do the work.

Open Positions

Viking Global Investors currently has 2 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 2 open positions at Viking Global Investors

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Sources

  1. Viking Global Investors — Official Careers Page —
  2. Viking Global Investors — Greenhouse Job Board —
  3. Viking Global Investors — Official Company Website —
  4. Greenhouse Boards API — Viking Global Investors Jobs Endpoint —