A separate engineering project
The FPGA project brings together three teams working on an exchange, market making and market taking. They collaborate to build a low-latency electronic trading system, with agreed interfaces connecting their hardware and software. The project runs separately from QTE’s main exchange: its teams hold no main-exchange capital and send no orders to it.
From software models to hardware
Work can include market-data processing, order-book maintenance, matching, quantitative signals, pricing and order generation. Software implementations provide reference behaviour, simulation, market replay and testing tools to support the hardware.
FPGA development translates algorithms and system requirements into RTL, balancing latency, throughput, pipelining and hardware resources. Engineers test and debug implementations against the reference models, then work across teams to integrate the complete system.
Working across teams
The exchange and trading components need consistent message formats and interfaces. Progress depends on communication, coordinated testing and understanding how a change in one component affects the rest of the system. Detailed operating and competition rules will be published separately from the main exchange rulebook.
Who this suits
Students interested in digital design, computer architecture, high-performance software and financial markets. Hardware work draws on SystemVerilog or Verilog alongside C++ and Python; software work centres on C++ and Python, with scope to learn FPGA integration.
Previous quantitative-finance experience is not required. Technical prerequisites vary by role, so applicants should check the existing role descriptions for the relevant experience and programming requirements.
Team structure
3 teams · 5 members per team · 15 members total
Teams: Exchange, Market Making and Market Taking.
- Team Lead — 1 per team
- FPGA Engineer — 3 per team
- Software Engineer — 1 per team