Pivot to HFT or quant dev from traditional SWE
Hi, posting a genuine inquiry here as Blind has helped me tremendously in the past in getting into SWE roles. I did a bit of thinking amidst all these layoff craziness and realized that I would like to specialize soon so I can start developing domain expertise. I’ve been thinking about quant dev/hft swe positions and just wondering what are the skills that these companies look for so I can start transitioning from a more traditional SWE role into them. Thanks! TC: 200K #finance #quant #hft
Just be good at C++, operating systems, algorithms, etc… Being good at C++ is the key. Its not enough to read Scott Meyers books. You must be passionate about it, you should know assembler, cpu instructions, concurrent and multi-threaded programming. Read the whole boost, folly libraries. You must be able to write such complex tools yourself. Competitive programming will help you a lot. Not only passing the interviews but to think and write code faster. Take some deep dive algorithm courses, become purple or orange on codeforces. Sometimes algo dev (quant dev) positions require good math skills, but nothing hard. I suggest you not to start from HRT, Jump Trading which are the best, but to start with some small hedge fund which will have better work life balance and just learn.