Ops Analyst at a HFT/Quant Fund
I am kinda confused and maybe I know the answer but wanted clarification.
What is the progression or realistic path for someone doing Ops at somewhere like Jump Trading, Virtu, XTX?
Can you even move to a trading/quant seat or are you just "stuck" in Ops or at best somewhere like Risk? I ask because the Ops role do not look easy and seem to still involve a heavy bit of number crunching/stress.
I don't see how such a role would prepare someone for most trading or quant roles although as you said the jobs are not easy. Ops might mean a lot of back/middle office things some are which are closer to revenue generation than others. I would guess you would have better chances of switching to a trading role if the trade was more operationally complex like anything involving physical delivery, creation/redemption or basis trading etc as opposed to black box quant strategies where you wouldn't learn anything about the details of the trading strategies.
Yeah true, I just find it funny when they all ask for VBA, SQL, and Python knowledge but then magically, it can't work for FO roles. Only say this as some of these trading roles do not need a PhD i.e. not pure cutting-edge research/ML roles.
Might pursue a masters in math/compsci now.
Thought about the trading roles but I feel, I don't care about commodities enough, at least right now. Maybe CCI is interesting.
Is this in the context of requirements for fresh grad roles or experienced roles? The requirements for fresh grad roles may be somewhat similar although I would expect the ops roles to be less competitive but I think it would be rare to land an experienced trading/quant role without relevant trading/quant experience. VBA, SQL, and Python may be helpful for traders but are definitely insufficient by themselves.
I would say more on the line of fresh grads/juniors (1-2 years of experience).
I just fail to see how things could be that much harder from a hard-skills view.
Sorry, the point is, I personally was not viewing myself as good enough for the trading roles but now that I have dug deeper, I feel like it's not that bad and maybe I can succeed.
Yeah the required hard skills for entry level traders are not that much. For quants the quantitative bar is considerably higher although honestly most fresh grad quant questions could be solved by a clever and well prepared high schooler who did well in math competitions. If you want a FO trading role I would certainly suggest applying for those roles directly instead of aiming for ops roles and then trying to switch.
You may be able to move to an execution trader role. But probably not to having your own book or being a quant.
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