current MFE student, career advice on e-trading/algo trading/market making

[Gomdoorii]

Hi Quantnet,

I am a current MFE student in the US and I am looking for a career advice to break into e-trading(or algo trading or systematic market making, etc...). I tried to do some research on my own and found out that for those roles, you need to be good at either SWE or ML, so either a strong coder or statistician is what they look for. Depending on the shop, the role of a developer and signal researcher could be separated or combined. But I come from a more traditional mathematical background such as measure theory, stoch calc, etc. and have some experience in programing (honest evalution: my code generally works, but possibly inefficiently. I code without the knowledge of low level computer whatever..for the sake of interviews, I can do medium level leetcode problems). During this MFE, I hope I could fill the bridge between what I am now and what it takes to get into e-trading.
Any advice on how to get in? Since I don't know what it's like to work there any comment on working in this role should also help. So if you could share your experience in this type of roles or your opinion on industry outlook is very welcome and appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Programming skill is the key for you to get into this field. Sounds like you can greatly benefit from taking Python or C++. We do offer those so take a look around at the materials of our courses (you can access levels 1, 2 for the C++ course without enrolling). There are plenty of free programming courses online too but ours are very customized for this field and taught by professionals in quant finance.