I am looking for a new job and have some technical phone screens coming up at more traditional software companies (mostly BE work), but have been recently messaged by a handful of recruiters from trading firms. While I understand the work of a traditional BE SWE, I honestly have little understanding of day-to-day life of a SWE at a trading firm. Anyone have experience or insight to how it is? Projects, WLB, tech stack, etc. would be appreciated. If it matters, these roles would be hybrid or remote-friendly based out of Chicago. YOE: 5.5 TC: 265k #engineering #software #swe #Amazon #L5 #SDEII #trading #interview #hire #quant #ChicagoTradingCompany #CTC #Optiver #Citadel #Jump #JumpTrading #jobseach #jobs #chicago #hybrid #remote #backend #data
Culture is more impact-focused. Tech stack is Python C++ and in some shops Java. Remote friendly would suggest the position isn’t that close to the money or the firm isn’t that established.
Ex quant. Firstly regarding the function, you should know that there's a big difference between the work that a quant developer and an otherwise standard swe would do at one of these firms. Namely the former usually works on the actual projects and adds features and such while the latter mostly improves infra, though this varies a lot place to place. As for wlb, most of the time you should say goodbye to it unfortunately, but that's the price you pay to basically double your salary. That being said, you should also know that these days a lot of HFT recruiters message faang ppl but the reality is that if you're not well ahead in your career, e.g. senior by 3 years, you're already dead in the water. These firms run extremely lean which is why they can pay so much. Again though there is a lot of variance. Places with more ballast like optiver or generally more headcount like akuna will be more generous with giving you a shot. As for the stacks, older firms are typically entirely c++/c#/c with newer ones, usually those which base around "ai", also use Python. In the interviews, they'll want to know your expertise with these languages usually wrt efficiency and speed. These firms are almost never remote friendly but the offices are usually great.
They wouldn’t just hire a swe who just got to senior at 5yoe? Or your saying the hfts expect you to be an outlier in your current role?
I think you actually might have a shot then. Basically they don't want to hear that you were in your level longer than a high performer would be.
If you're a backend swe in trading, the work is not too different. Write APIs, make requests to other services, get replies, output replies somehow. If you're working on pricing, you would frequently have to translate equations into code, writing test cases to make sure ur numbers are right. If you work on connectivity, you would write code to connect to exchanges. You'll be given an exchange spec and be expected to understand all the messages and how they interact with ur positions, instruments, trading systems, risk limits, etc, and you'll write code for that. In larger companies, there are libraries pre-written for common protocols (fix etc), so your work is just to translate deserialised code -> what that means for ur system.
You forgot execution.
What does execution mean at CTC?
If you ask such questions you are not for JS, 2S or hrt
ok….microsoft
Ha fair enough, just curious is all