How To Break In

by Oliver J. Scholten PhD

I'm not here to sell you anything.

This page is a guide to my younger self about getting in to the top tiers of the finance industry.

How to prepare, how to approach the journey, and ultimately how to land a job amongst some of the best engineers in the world.

Everything below is my personal opinion, feel free to share your disagreements.

Who should read this?

If you're interested in technology and writing code that directly or indirectly impacts millions of dollars in assets, this is for you.

If you're thinking about which career path to take and want to know what to expect if you take this option, this is for you.

Finally, if you're not sure what you want, but know that a high salary and long hours is probably the way to get it, then this is also for you.

Skills to Learn

This is surprisingly the easiest section to describe.

You'll need to be good with technology and one programming language in particular (I chose Python, but C++, Rust, and others are viable depending on the exact firm you end up at).

And when I say good, I mean, think about everyone you currently know and imagine someone asking all of them who they know that's best with technology/computers/programming.

You need 99/100 of those answers to be you.

You do this by completely immersing yourself in the subject. Think deeply about your university courses, read broadly and experiment often.

Be playful but thorough in your learning, and don't succumb to the hustle/grindset approach, that's for dull monotonous work.

I had an entire PhD's worth of time of thinking, but you could do it faster if you were strongly motivated.

Bonus: they get a lot of hate but also get used to problems from HackerRank and LeetCode early since they'll be your first hurdle later on.

Certifications & Education

Get as qualified as you reasonably can to distinguish yourself from your peers.

Depending on the exact role you want (data engineer, data scientist, quant developer, etc), a first class technical degree from a decent university is a good start.

A masters is better, and a PhD may be overkill (but can't hurt).

Also think about how describing your course material might sound. Are you 'learning database best practices' (boring) or are you actually 'exploring low latency data pipelines' (better).

The key is presenting what you've studied in a way that makes commercial sense, rather than being purely academic.

You can't fake this part (especially at the caliber of skills you're up against), so choose something that you'll enjoy, that sounds good, and that you feel good talking about.

Avoid paying for courses. A PDF certificate that you spent 6 weeks watching youtube videos is useless. Spend the time mastering your craft instead. Remember, you're playing at an international level now, your knowledge should come from expert documentation, your own exploration, and public conferences and technical leader's blogs/keynotes/etc in your space.

Projects & Experience

This is a controversial one.

Don't write a crypto trading bot. Don't write a social media sentiment analysis tool.

In the age of LLMs these aren't impressive.

Instead if you haven't already, create something which uses a technology you'd like to work with professionally.

Want to use PostgreSQL? Write a simple app which gives you a reason to use some advanced features. Want to use FastAPI? Deploy an API which does something interesting that you can talk about.

Also think about how the thing you're making sounds.

Are you using all the latest tech to build an anime pillow design optimizer (nothing against that, but a professional hmmmm), or are you building a homelab network diagnostics tool for data streaming? (interesting, what scale of data is it etc?)

On GitHub: I had a transaction analytics tool on GitHub from my research which added some credibility, but don't worry if you're not contributing to the Linux kernel every day for a year. Talk about what you're interested in and the technology you used. GitHub is not essential.

Networking & Branding

This is the most imporant section of them all because of how the industry functions.

Can you get a job by applying yourself through a platform like indeed or linkedin, maybe. But the jobs you want probably aren't posted anywhere.

Hedge funds and trading firms are like football teams, traders and quantitative researchers are like the players, and engineers are like the support staff.

The players have agents, but so do the engineers. They're called headhunters, and they trawl through LinkedIn searching for keywords which match their open assignments.

Your only job here is to have a profile that's visible and matches what they're looking for, and like sharks to a drop of blood, they will find you.

The key is to present your experience, your studies, and your other projects in a way that makes sense to them.

They don't care that you're using Python 3.12 because of some new feature. They care that you can write code, in Python, using libraries X, Y, and Z.

They might be technical, but not as technical as you, and their job here is to call you, make sure you can talk to people, and then put your CV infront of a hiring manager/engineer.

Make friends with as many headhunters as you can. They know the city, know the landscape, and every hiring manager looking for talent.

Plus: headhunters are great to talk to and be around, imagine you've fully specialised in technology, they've fully specialised in social networking, take the lobster dinners and drinks!

Job Hunting

This is where things get real, and where things will get difficult fast.

There are only around 40 'top tier' hedge funds and banks in the world, and they are ultra-competitive.

Assuming your headhunter has got you in to the first round with the firm of your dreams, the next steps are going to be tricky.

You'll have two or more technical interviews (probably HackerRank/LeetCode above), which if you've prepared properly and know your stuff should be uncomfortable but still doable.

You'll probably have one or more social/leadership rounds too. These aim to uncover what sort of person you are and how you would be in a team setting.

You might also be pressed for technical answers here so stay sharp, and as true in life, if you don't know something just say it.

After 4-10 rounds of questions and problems you'll have a gut feeling if it went well or not.

Remember, the people interviewing you are expensive, so going through a full process is a good sign.

If you don't get the job, there probably won't be feedback, but think about what happened and if there was anything you messed up on. Improve this for the next one.

If you think it went well and still didn't get it, it's possible another even better candidate came in at the same time.

This is more common than someone going through all the rounds and messing up the last question, so don't take it too personally if you don't get a nice contract in your inbox.

Bonus: Please, please, have a shower, wear a shirt (no tie), don't take the call from your bed or in a public park (I've seen both). Show up for yourself and give yourself the best possible chance after all your hard work.

Resources

I can't think of any single resource to link here that you won't encounter on your journey naturally.

There are many books and (free) videos and documentation available, but this is going to be a long and personal journey as you go from beginner to expert.

The one resource you need to have, is your why.

Why are you doing this? Why study so hard? Why go through this gauntlet?

I want to be rich isn't enough. I want to be the best might be enough. I can't see myself being anything other than the top of my game is starting to sound good...

Good luck out there, and feel free to find me online for any questions.

Last updated 2025.10.22