There are many, quickfix being the most common but some semi-commercial ones as well -- any search engine will turn them up.
FIX is messaging protocol for trading -- what exactly do you say it's "architected to be" if not for trading? A major advantage of FIX is that you don't need to have a platform. If you're truly a high-volume automated trader, GUI-based platforms simply get in the way. FIX is used by (probably) every major player in the industry, for this reason and many others. I realize that FIX is more challenging to get started with than some of the off-the-shelf platform API's, but it doesn't seem like you got your head around FIX even to the point of understanding what it is. Whether or not it's worth your time to do so is dictated by your need (or not) for low latency, fault tolerance, and broker-neutrality.
Sorry.... but I remain resiliant...FIX is poorly architected... likely due to cheap, foreign tech talent....that created it in the first place. On top of that, many programmable trading platforms DO NOT support FIX...making it a worthless protocol.
What exchanges? What platforms? How many filters? I've had someone code for me 200/hr USD.. I did some rudimentary coding and testing myself using different platforms. Basically, you code it in such a way that the discretionary component is left out. So you have someone fabricate a tool that can be used by a artisan (you). Even a excellent tool, will yield poor results if used by someone who is not familiar with it. Checkout Tradingblox.com ..ask for Tim. Chris
How could you possibly know that FIX was created by "cheap foreign talent" when you clearly don't have the first idea of what it is? FIX is an acronym that stands for Financial Information Exchange, and was built by Chris Morstatt and Bob Lamoureux in 1992 for exchanging trading data between Salomon Brothers and Fidelity Investments. In case you can't tell by the names, Chris and Bob are white skinned, blond haired, blue eyed "real 'Muricans" that I'm sure would meet your Aryan Coders test, even though that's completely irrelevant when it comes to coding quality. And clearly it was "architected to be specific to trading" since that's the only thing it was built for! Sounds like you have a major chip on your shoulder. I've got news for you, if you're a software developer and you're having a hard time getting a good job the problem isn't "cheap foreign tech talent", it's the fact that no-one in the software development world wants to work with you specifically because of this attitude. What FIX wasn't really designed for is quoting, the overhead is too high if you're getting thousands of quotes a second. But for the kind of stuff we're doing it's fine. And every major broker supports FIX pretty much by definition, it's what they use to communicate your orders. It is the most agnostic interface out there, even if not every broker will let you bring your $25,000 account over and give you access to a FIX interface.
Whatever...I still think it's a "fuggly" protocol. I think that even IB's API (which has had some rough patches over the years) is better than FIX.
It's because they don't have enough asset to hire a programmer at the moment so they are giving a promise of future payoff. High risky but high growth startup firms offer this kind of things to their investors. But please note that if things go wrong, you get nothing, likewise, if things go well, you will get the promise, this is why it's said high growth firms involve high risk.