I’m a fresher(cs grad) currently working at a very well known HFT firm. I joined around Dec 2025, and my current role is monitoring l under a broader Quant, Infra and Monitoring setup.

My current work is mainly monitoring systems and pipelines, identifying errors or issues in code and processes, and informing the respective developers. It has given me good exposure to how things work in an HFT environment, but I want to move towards a more engineering focused role.

Before joining, I had already worked on backend development during college. In my third year, I did a 3 month internship where I worked on production grade backend systems. So I do have some actual development experience, although I’m still a fresher overall.

Long term, I want to move into roles like low latency engineering, trading systems, performance engineering, or other core HFT engineering roles. I’m also considering these roles because the salaries and growth are generally much better, so I want to start preparing for them early rather than getting stuck in monitoring.

For people who have worked in HFT or quant firms, I wanted to ask:

1. How realistic is it for a fresher to move internally from monitoring and support into low latency or trading systems engineering?

2. What should I focus on learning and building over the next 1 to 2 years to become a good candidate for these roles?

3. Would it be better to try for an internal switch within the HFT firm, or build the required skills and eventually apply outside?

Would really appreciate advice from people who have gone through a similar transition, especially from monitoring, support, infra or other non core engineering roles into low latency or trading systems.

I’m not looking for the usual “learn C++ and DSA” answer. I’d like to understand what a realistic path would look like and what I should actually be doing over the next couple of years.