his week in Karlsruhe, our team did something that nobody else did: solved problem I.
In ICPC NWERC, problem I was not solved by any student team. Not solved by Jump Trading. Wasn’t solved by JetBrains or any of the other companies competing there.
Our people solved it.
These aren’t just fresh graduates who want to get hired, these are traders, engineers, and quants at Alber Blanc who still do competitive programming at the elite level while building the real trading systems.
Yes, we placed 2nd out of 141 teams at NWERC. Yes, we won every company team there.
But that’s not the reason we went to Karlsruhe.
We were present at the event as a Gold Global Sponsor because we believe in this ecosystem. Competitive programming isn’t recruitment theatre for us, it’s where the best algorithmic minds gather. It is something we believe in, and as such we advocate for NWERC.
And this year, we got to see exactly why that investment matters.
Here’s what stands out: these people work full-time at Alber Blanc – they refine trading algorithms, debug systems under fire, and generally solve real problems that move real money.
Yet they continue to compete at the highest level.
We solved 11 problems in 5 hours, including problem I—the one every other team avoided. Aarhus (3rd place) also solved 11 but skipped I entirely. We didn’t, not because we train more, but because solving hard problems is literally our daily work. That’s how you stay sharp.
That’s the culture we’ve built – if your job is solving impossible real-time systems, competitive programming isn’t a sideshow. It’s an extension of how you already think.
We’re not saying this to show off. (Okay, maybe a little.)
If you work at a company where your daily job is intellectually stimulating enough that you have what it takes to compete at NWERC level, where solving hard problems is just what you do, you’d want to work at Alber Blanc.
If you have participated in ICPC. If you know what it means to solve the unsolvable under time pressure. If you want to work somewhere that actually values that skill every single day – reach out! We’re hiring people who think like that.
Thanks again to the NWERC organizers and our co-sponsors (Jump Trading, JetBrains, etc.), and all the teams that competed. Our ecosystem gets better the more we all invest in it.
We’re hiring! Check out our jobs page if competitive programming sounds interesting, or get in touch with us in LinkedIn.
