Switching to HFT crypto company?
Thinking of joining my friend’s 5 person high-frequency trading crypto company, as a “Trade Support Engineer” — still trying to figure out exactly what this role would entail. I would be employee #6. They would be offering me ~$140k in SF. I currently make $130k at a startup in Virginia, but have an interview with a public non-prestigious Bay Area company that could offer me $250k TC. I’m a product designer by trade and have zero coding skills, other than basic HTML/CSS stuff. Everyone else at the HFT firm has CS degrees, some come from Stanford and Princeton — it’s a bit intimidating. Part of me thinks this is an exciting opportunity to try something new and join a stellar team from which I might be able to learn from. Another part of me thinks I’ll just get stuck doing shitty work with no potential for growth since I can’t code. Thoughts? YoE: 4 years
Do you get equity? Commission? I'd say go for it if you think it sounds exciting and you're in a stage of life where you have room to take some risk
What exchanges are they on? Lxdx? Bitmex (lol)? Are they gunning for institutional trading platforms or ones hosted in aws? How can I get in touch with these peeps
Bad idea - this crypto "HFT" startup doesn't sound like it'll be able to provide the mentorship and dev resources for a budding frontend engineer (plus you are just a back office cost center, so forget the hype). At trading shops, if the title doesn't mention "support" then it still might be a support role. If it mentions support, you are definitely the trader's dog. Source: I know people who have worked in similar roles. It was not exciting, to say the least.
Sounds like a great opportunity to move into development, if that’s what you want to do. For an entry-level dev, the salary and opportunity are great. Just set the expectation that you want to be able to code, not handle customer support issues. You’re not getting paid much so the learning should be great.
What’s high frequency for crypto, 3 tx/day? 🍆
I know your joking around, but in all seriousness there are some big opportunities in crypto HFT due to the legality of wash trading and lack of regulation. Most exchanges cap their apis at x requests per second, such as 6 or 10, with premium subs available where you can go higher.
There’s potential in quant trading crypto (most established props have big footholds in it already), but you can’t do HFT with crypto. Transport protocols, formats, etc aren’t regulated or formalized. Exchange infra are all over the place. Hopefully as the big exchanges mature these things become less of a problem. I think Gemini can have a good future.