Third Year CS Student Looking to Break Into HFT/HF/Prop Trading as Software Engineer
Hello WSO, I am a third year CS student from Canada. I don't go to Waterloo or UofT, but a school that's slightly below. I interned at Google last summer and will be there again this summer for a C++ infra role. I would like to break into HFT/HF/Prop Trading as SWE. Last year I interviewed at DE Shaw and bombed the final round. HRT I bombed the phone screen.
What tips do you guys have to get the interviews and to pass the interviews? My current plan is to grind c++/os/networks/cache friendly code etc and network. Thanks.
Go to team blind, no one here really has expertise in quant
Gotta disagree with this statement. OP, you came to the right place if you were looking for quant career and interview advice. Although I can’t be of help as my background is in VC, if this question doesn’t get answered repost in a different thread and it will get answered eventually.
Hey, I'm a CS student at a non-target US school who finally broke into a top HF this summer. I'm sure many people here would be able to give you better advice than me, but since our situations are similar, here's what I did - for what it's worth.
Honestly your resume seems more impressive than mine. I had no practical C++ experience nor any previous internship at the likes of Google. I was ghosted / rejected at every single financial firm I applied to last year, so I didn't even have any idea what the interview process would be like.
What I did have was 1. a very good GPA and plenty of research experience as an undergrad (which my interviewers seemed to like), 2. a prior internship working on ML-adjacent stuff (which is a very similar skill set to the role I was applying for), 3. a solid understanding of algorithms and the ability to explain my code as I was writing it without having to take long pauses, and 4. an eye for correctness (I always clarified every single ambiguity in the problem statement before starting to write any code).
Honestly, my actual solutions weren't all that great. I actually left print statements in one of my answers by mistake, and for another question, I used a sub-optimal algorithm. But I guess that didn't matter too much. In fact, I talked with some of the other employees later on after I got my offer, and it seems that the interviewer with whom I wrote the sub-optimal algorithm actually put in some strong words of recommendation on my behalf. This was quite surprising to me, but I guess it goes to show the importance of the behavioral side and coding style over just raw algorithmic efficiency.
YMMV, obviously, but it seems that in my case, the interviewers were far more interested in how I explained and intuitively reasoned about my code, and how I would fit into the organization as a whole, rather than how fast my code ran. I was pleasantly surprised, and I wish that more interviewers would have the same mindset - you can always find a specific algorithm on SO, but it takes much longer to change poor habits in things like variable naming, commenting, and handling edge cases.
Thanks man! I appreciate you sharing your advice. May I ask you some followup questions?
1. I've never done research before, and It's DDay - 6 months for me. Do you think research helped you a lot during the resume screening process?
2. Going for the ML-adjacent stuff line, do you know others who did C++ infra and were recruited because of their "domain knowledge"?
Personally I think algorithm questions are ok for me. I will do more leetcode and mock interview with others.
Appreciate your help man.
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