Finance / HFT Sector
FPGA Developer YOE: 2 TC: 101k ________________ Trying to break into the HFT space or fintech generally. Seems like FPGA roles are limited (one "guru" per company, limited support team), but very well compensated at senior levels. Am I wrong? Can anyone give insight on what it's like working in development for these firms (FPGA or general)? Prop firms or market makers. (1) How is the knowledge transfer among the dev teams? (2) I understand long hours per week... 50, 60, more? (3) I understand NDAs are common, what about non-compete agreements? (4) Do you think this a sustainable career path overall? ________________ @ Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma Securities, Tower Research Capital, Citadel Securities, Jane Street, JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Susquehanna International Group (SIG), QuantLab, IMC Financial Markets, DRW Trading, Optiver, Jump Trading, XR Trading, Simplex, DV Trading, etc.
1. Teams are generally collaborative from what I’ve seen. Can be somewhat secretive and competitive between teams, but less true for devs. 2. I think around 50 is average, above 60 would be rare and not expected. Somewhat team and company dependent of course. 3. Non-competes are very common in the industry - expect at least a year of non-compete, usually base is fully paid but no bonus. 4. Pretty sustainable - HFT is overall a very stable business, especially at the larger and more established players.
This all sounds about right to me, except that Jane Street is an outlier and doesn't do non-competes. I would put average hours at closer to 45, although not sure if that differs on the FPGA team.
That is interesting, I wonder what the reasoning is - that’s definitely not the industry standard And yea at least for us hours is very team dependent so hard to give any sort of accurate answer
Are you still looking to get into HFT?
Where ever you are, the HFT headhunters will find you 😂
Jane Street FPGA team is growing fast, now is definitely the right time to get in the door. 45 hours is standard. No noncompetes, but we try very hard to make sure people like it enough not to leave for competitors.
I have few questions , can I DM you ?
Sure, though I'm not an FPGA dev myself so I might not know all the answers
I'm looking to get into HFT as FPGA dev
FPGA and finance don’t correlate. Am I missing something
Low latency applications e.g. http://algo-logic.com/
Show me job postings?