In short, I'm wanting to apply for developer jobs at HFT companies and would appreciate anyone giving me names of HFT companies in Chicago or otherwise outside of NYC (or a NYC company that will let me work remotely) that are worth working for. Thanks! Longer: So today is my 33rd birthday and I've been thinking a lot about my career the last few weeks. I'm getting too old for this shit. I had about 8 years wasted working for a startup run by CEO who kept promising we were on the verge of making millions while underpaying me based on this promise. Now I'm working in a job where the people are fine, I'm paid decently, and I'm allowed to work from home like 90+% of the time (I do have to go Chicago a few weeks/year), but it's mind numbingly boring work (CTO for a small startup that runs a website basically). I feel like I'm wasting my knowledge and skills. I've long been a performance freak, obsessing over code trying to reduce memory usage, reduce CPU usage, or latency. I understand operating systems, hardware, network protocols, and even less known among software devs, things like FPGAs. I actually understand how a CPU works (so many software devs have this abstracted from them), how memory management and paging works, and so forth. I can only think of a few fields in which this sort of knowledge would be useful: game development, large scale simulations, and HFT. The complexity of the market has long been an interest of mine in general, although from a different angle than many of you I suspect. I want to compete against others, the sheer technical challenge of being faster has long been an interest of mine, but I was never willing to move to a major city (NYC, Chicago) until recently. Now I want to at least try to get in to a position with a HFT firm. To that end, I've been trying to find names of HFT companies, but as you can imagine, that's not easy to come by. Additionally, interviewing is not going to be easy as I'd imagine they're going to want me in person. It takes me 7-8 hours to get to Chicago, which means I'll have to take like 2 days off work for an interview (or show up to the interview without much sleep, which probably will be to my detriment), so unless these companies are going to be accommodating in scheduling my interview(s) this is going to be difficult -- if I can even get interviews, but I need to give it a shot. I hope that my resume can spark some interest with a recruiter: started c++ around 16 years ago, C a few years before that, know assembly, while an undergrad I worked on some research projects with Ph.Ds and had them published and/or presented at conferences, got some patents. I have a BSc in computer engineering (hardware design) and a minor in mathematics. Unfortunately for the last few years I've been wasting my knowledge managing website development for various companies. I need a change and I'm finally in a position to be able to do it, but I lack names of HFT companies that are legit and hiring developers. I mean I know some, but was hoping you lot could give me some guidance on this. I'm not looking to be a trader, I want to improve the speed of the software behind automated trading. A slow moving automated trading company will satisfy some of my interest, but not all. I'm looking to be challenged, I need to be. Thanks for reading my stream of consciousness and thank you for any advice or other assistance in this matter.
you dont know any trading firms? post your linkedin and github. Working from home doing mind numbingly boring work can pay well if you think a bit.
have you looked at susquehanna? a relative of mine works there doing the type of thing you are describing. but they are in Philly area.
I'm creating a spreadsheet with a list of HFT firms and going through the jobs to ensure they really are HF and not just slow trading, taking notes of pros/cons I see of them. I've found about 10 that sound like what I'm looking for so far, but there's not like a directory of them that I'm aware of, so it's hard to know who the players are. That's why I'm asking. I'm not asking about trading firms in general -- I do not want to be a trader. I have a job as a developer. It pays rather well, but it's boring and a waste of my talents, that's why I'm looking for a change. It's not that I'm unemployed and/or trying to get rich quick. I genuinely want to work in an environment that can combine my knowledge of software and hardware to squeeze out every bit of performance possible. I've also looked for game dev companies, but it seems game dev isn't what it was 15 years ago (in terms of performance and hardware -- I don't know any game dev shops using FPGAs for example).
I actually live in Pennsylvania, although in the middle of the state (not near Philadelphia) -- I am willing to relocate. I did look at Susquehanna, but the job opening for C++ developer didn't seem to emphasize low latency. Their other developer positions referenced technologies such as C#, so I think they're just building general trading software without an emphasis on low latency. I'll look in to them again. Thanks for the info!
Not a bad list here: http://news.efinancialcareers.com/u...cy-trading-pay-career-prospects-15-key-firms/
Happy Birthday Your story kind of made me think of the movie Mr Destiny 1990....James Belushi was reflecting on his ...just average life ...on his 35'th Birthday.
I found a number of companies on that list that had open positions that emphasized low latency and/or had FPGA positions opening. Basically I figure if a company has FPGA positions open, then it's probably a low latency company -- I actually built a MIPS based CPU in a FPGA using VHDL about 12 years ago, but that was the last time I used an FPGA, so while I understand them and would work well on a team that integrated them, I probably wouldn't be qualified for the job. That said, it's just one of the sort of signs I'm looking for in a company. Are you willing to share any low latency trading companies with me? Would be much appreciated. My current interesting company list is up to 27, but about 5-10 of them only had a slight reference to speed/latency, so I don't think they're actually what I'm looking for.